Preamble

The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

Oral Answers to Questions — CONTRACT LABOUR AND SLAVERY.

Mr. JOHN HARRIS: 1.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any Reports or representations have been received by his Department, either from the Colonial Office or from foreign Governments, as to slave-owning and slave-trading within and beyond Liberian territory; and whether it is proposed to submit any such Reports to the Council of the League of Nations?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Ponsonby): No reports of slave-owning and slave-trading within and beyond Liberian territory have been received. A traffic, however, in contract labour from Liberian ports has been brought to the notice of His Majesty's Government from time to time, owing to the inclusion of British subjects from Sierre Leone among the gangs. Representations have been made to the Liberian Government with a view to obviate this danger, and at present only two ports, remote from British territory, are open to the traffic. Representations have been made to the Liberian Government with a view to the closing of these ports, and it is hoped that there will be no need to approach the Council of the League of Nations in this matter.

Mr. HARRIS: Can the hon. Gentleman tell us to what destination these contract labourers are sent?

Mr. PONSONBY: I require notice of that question.

Mr. LINFIELD: What is the difference between contract labour and slavery in this connection?

Mr. BLACK: 2.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in view of his announcement that Reports have been received by the Government concerning slavery in Abyssinia, and that these Reports are to be brought before the League of Nations, he will lay such Reports on the Table of the House of Commons; and whether natives of Kenya Colony, being British subjects, are among the sufferers in such slave-procuring operations?

Mr. PONSONBY: It would not be in the public interest to publish the Reports to which the hon. Member refers; the answer to the second part of the question is in the negative.

Mr. EDMUND HARVEY: Will the hon. Gentleman consider publishing the Reports without giving the names of the officers concerned with the places indicated, otherwise than by initials, as was done previously by Sir Edward Grey?

Mr. J. HARRIS: Has it not been held hitherto in the Foreign Office that the most effective way of dealing with these abuses is by open diplomacy?

Sir ROBERT HAMILTON: Why is it in the public interest that this House should not know the facts, so that this curse may be stamped out?

Mr. PONSONBY: As I explained to a deputation on this particular question that I received recently, at which the hon. Member was present, the object being to try to put down slavery, in this particular case the publication of the Reports would defeat that object, and would involve several people concerned in very unnecessary embarrassment. In these circumstances, I have nothing to add to the answer which I have already given.

Mr. BLACK: I beg to give notice that, owing to the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I will call the attention of the House to the matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible moment.

Mr. J. HARRIS: 10.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty what naval units have been engaged during the last year in the task of liberating slaves on the African, Arabian, and other coasts; how many slave-carrying craft have been captured; and how many slaves have been set free since the beginning of 1922?

Mr. ALEXANDER: Two sloops have been stationed in the Red Sea and two sloops and a special service vessel in the Persian Gulf during the last year, part of their duties being the prevention of slave traffic by sea; in addition four destroyers were sent to the Red Sea from the Mediterranean Station in April last for this purpose; no slave-carrying craft has been captured during the period referred to; 33 slaves have been set free since the beginning of 1922.

Mr. HARRIS: Will the hon. Gentleman see that a report of these operations is published, as there is always a great deal of interest in this very beneficent work that the Navy is doing?

Viscount CURZON: Will the hon. Gentleman represent to the Admiralty that they should not employ destroyers longer than is absolutely necessary in the Red Sea, in view of the climatic conditions?

Mr. ALEXANDER: I will bring that suggestion to the notice of my hon. Friend, and the other point raised will be considered.

Earl WINTERTON: Have not the whole of these slave-carrying craft come from Abyssinia?

Oral Answers to Questions — GREAT BRITAIN AND POLAND (TREATY).

Mr. BARCLAY: 3.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that the delay in the ratification of the Commercial Treaty between His Majesty's Government and Poland is depriving exporters from this country to Poland of the benefit of most-favoured-nation treatment; and whether he can take any steps to expedite the ratification of this Treaty?

Mr. PONSONBY: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. In reply to the second part, I would refer the hon. Member to the answer given by the President of the Board of Trade on the 13th instant to the hon. Member for Southport. His Majesty's Government have been, and are, doing everything possible to expedite ratification.

Mr. BECKER: Is the ratification of this Treaty being kept back owing to
pressure from the Russian Government on our Government?

Mr. PONSONBY: I require notice of that question.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL NAVY.

LIEUTENANT-COMMANDERS.

Mr. BAKER: 4.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty the number of lieutenant-commanders in the Royal Navy who are unemployed, and the number who have been unemployed for more than two years?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. A. V. Alexander): The number of lieutenant-commanders at present unemployed is 91, of whom two have been unemployed for more than two years.

OFFICERS (PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES).

Mr. BAKER: 5.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty whether, during the General Election of 1918, an Admiralty instruction was issued permitting naval officers on full pay to run as candidates for Parliament; whether the instruction has been revoked; and, if so, when?

Mr. ALEXANDER: Rules for the 1918 Election were issued soon after the Armistice in November, 1918, when a very large proportion of the community were still under naval or military discipline. The rules then issued provided that officers and men might be given leave lo stand for Parliament, and that if elected they would "not during the continuance of the War be placed on half-pay," but would be allowed to fulfil their Parliamentary duties subject to the exigencies of the Service. It was added that at the end of the War, officers elected would go on half-pay and be subject to the ordinary rules of retirement for non-service. On 2nd January, 1919, demobilisation of temporary officers having proceeded further, this rule was amended to read that officers when elected would go on half pay. In short, a temporary exception to the ordinary rule in this matter was made, and was notified as being temporary in November, 1918; and the ordinary rule
of naval officer candidates going on half pay was resumed on 2nd January, 1919.

Mr. BAKER: Will the Minister send me a copy of the present instructions?

Mr. ALEXANDER: Certainly.

BATTLE OF JUTLAND (OFFICIAL ACCOUNT).

Captain Viscount CURZON: 8.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty when it is proposed to publish the official account of the Battle of Jutland; and what it is proposed to publish?

Mr. ALEXANDER: The date for publication depends on the time taken to produce and check certain diagrams. Owing to the unsatisfactory nature of the printing of these diagrams by the first firm employed, it has recently been found necessary to employ a second firm. It is, therefore, not possible to forecast the exact date of completion. The letter press is complete. The publication will be a plain statement, in narrative form, of all the available facts, and their relation to each other, which bear upon the action known as the Battle of Jutland. Lord Jellicoe has criticised some of the statements in the narrative, and his criticisms are being published in the form of an appendix to the narrative, with explanatory notes by the Admiralty giving briefly the reasons why the conclusions published in the narrative differ from the opinions expressed by Lord Jellicoe.

Viscount CURZON: Are we to understand that the printing troubles have accounted for the last three or four years' delay in the publication of the Report, and may we take it that there will now be no undue delay in publishing this document?

Mr. ALEXANDER: The Noble Lord will understand that I am not in possession of the details of this matter, but I will pass his question on to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty.

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: Who represents the Admiralty in the House?

Mr. ALEXANDER: The Parliamentary Secretary is engaged on other business.

Mr. PRINGLE: Is he playing a golf match?

Captain BRASS: As the letterpress is already in existence, can that be published without the diagrams?

SINGAPORE BASE.

Mr. SPENCE: 9.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty the number of acres of land purchased by the late Government from the Bukit Sembawang Rubber Company, Limited, with the object of establishing a naval base at Singapore; the price paid per acre; the number of acres of land recently purchased now leased to the Bukit Sembawang Rubber Company; when the lease contract was formed; the terms of lease; the monthly rental realised; and as to whether the land leased was fully cultivated for rubber production?

Mr. ALEXANDER: The reply to the first part of the question is none, as the land for the projected naval base was acquired by the Government of the Straits Settlements. We have no information as to what transactions have passed in the Colony with regard to it.

INVALIDED RATINGS (PENSIONS).

Major Sir BERTRAM FALLE: 11.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty whether he will consider the setting up of an independent tribunal similar to the appeal boards of the Ministry of Pensions to whom naval invalided ratings may state their case if they are dissatisfied with the degree of disability assessed by naval medical boards, observing that under present naval regulations a naval attributable disability pensioner has no right of appeal against the degree of assessment?

Mr. ALEXANDER: The matter is under consideration.

DOCKYARD WORKMEN (BONUSES).

Sir B. FALLE: 12.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty if he is aware that considerable delay occurs in the payment of bonuses granted to dockyard workmen who are discharged after 10 years' service; and whether he will take steps to remove the causes of delay?

Mr. ALEXANDER: I am not clear as to the precise cases of men discharged after 10 years' service to which the hon.
and gallant Member refers. Hired dockyard employés are eligible for gratuities under the Superannuation Acts after seven years if discharged on reduction, and after 15 years if discharged on account of age or infirmity, and these are normally paid without unnecessary delay. The recent transfer of 7s. a week from industrial bonus to substantive pay, however, has given rise to difficulties as to the correct method of calculating superannuation awards in certain cases. These difficulties, I am glad to say, are now in course of being surmounted, and I hope that it may shortly be possible to issue full awards to the men affected, the majority of whom have already received substantial advances, in accordance with the usual practice when final awards are delayed. Should there be any cases of apparent delay still outstanding I shall be glad to inquire further into them if I can be furnished with full particulars.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNEMPLOYMENT.

EMPLOYMENT EXCHANGES (JOBS FOUND).

Mr. BECKER: 17.
asked the Minister of Labour if he can state the number of jobs which have been found for the unemployed by the Employment Exchanges during the last 12 monthly periods?

The MINISTER of LABOUR (Mr. Thomas Shaw): During the 12 months ended 7th April, 1924, the number of vacancies filled by Employment Exchanges in Great Britain was 962,063. I will circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT the details for each month in the period.

Mr. BECKER: Does the right hon. Gentleman expect the same number of jobs to be found in future?

Mr. SHAW: The figures show that since the present Government took office a great many more jobs have been found than before.

Captain BRASS: Can the right hon. Gentleman state whether the jobs that have been found since the present Government took office are due to the efforts of this Government or of the previous Government?

Mr. SHAW: The facts are there.

Following are the details:


4 weeks ended 7th May, 1923
…
76,290


4 weeks ended 4th June, 1923
…
65,684


4 weeks ended 2nd July, 1923
…
62,830


5 weeks ended 6th Aug., 1923
…
81,331


4 weeks ended 3rd Sept., 1923
…
58,312


5 weeks ended 8th Oct., 1923
…
77,738


4 weeks ended 5th Nov., 1923
…
70,173


4 weeks ended 3rd Dec., 1923
…
80,049


5 weeks ended 7th Jan., 1924
…
97,138


4 weeks ended 4th Feb., 1924
…
84,584


4 weeks ended 3rd March, 1924
…
89,714


5 weeks ended 7th April, 1924
…
118,220


Total
…
962,063

MIDDLESBROUGH.

Mr. TREVELYAN THOMSON: 18.
asked the Minister of Labour if he is aware that, owing to the Middlesbrough Corporation having already expended £1,102,585 on unemployed relief works and owing to their local rates being 20s. in the £, they have passed a resolution declaring their inability to proceed with further schemes unless they receive an increased rate of financial assistance from the Government; and will he favourably consider this request in view of the large percentage of unemployed in that town?

Mr. SHAW: I have no exact information as to the total amount spent by the Middlesbrough Corporation on works to relieve unemployment, and although I am informed that the local rates are approximately the figure mentioned by the hon. Member, I was not aware of the resolution he quotes. It would not be possible, I am afraid, to vary the general terms of financial assistance in favour of particular localities.

Mr. THOMSON: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider whether it is possible to vary the scale for those towns that have abnormally heavy rates due to unemployment?

Mr. PRINGLE: Would the right hon. Gentleman not support this Corporation in carrying out the official labour policy of providing work rather than doles?

POST OFFICE APPOINTMENT, PURTON.

Mr. BONWICK: 19.
asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that Mr. A. J. Scott, of 3, Clarence Cottages, The Square, Purton, having made application
for the position of postman at Purton, received a communication from the Swindon Employment Exchange asking him to call at 9 a.m. on 12th May; that when Mr. Scott called, in response to the official request, he was informed that the post for which he applied had been filled; and if the Employment Exchange was carrying out Regulations laid down by the Ministry of Labour in asking an out-of-work ex-service man to make a journey of 12 miles in order to convey to him information which could have been sent by letter?

Mr. SHAW: I am having local inquiries made and will let the hon. Member know the result as soon as possible.

GOVERNMENT RELIEF SCHEMES.

Mr. LUMLEY: 20.
asked the Minister of Labour how many of the persons employed on schemes for the relief of unemployment on 25th April, 1924, owe their employment to schemes initiated in the first instance by the present Government?

Mr. SHAW: I would remind the hon. Member of the reply I gave him on Wednesday last. Figures showing the information asked for are not available, but, as stated in that reply, the number employed on relief works on 25th April was 15,669 greater than at the beginning of the year.

Mr. LUMLEY: Is it a fact that not one single person has been put into employment by the present Government?

Mr. SHAW: Hon. Members opposite will have a better opportunity of getting my scalp to-morrow.

Sir KINGSLEY WOOD: Why cannot the Minister give a definite reply in view of the Debate to-morrow?

Captain BRASS: Hon. Members do not want the scalp of the right hon. Gentleman, but want to know whether the Government have made any arrangements to increase employment in this country?

Mr. SHAW: I shall be glad in my speech to-morrow to show that the phenomenal decrease in unemployment is directly due to the policy of the Government.

Viscount CURZON: 27.
asked the Minister of Labour how many men have so far obtained employment out of schemes
entirely initiated by the present Government; and whether he can state how many men have so far lost employment as a result of the decision to do away with the McKenna Duties?

Mr. SHAW: As regards the first part of the question, I would refer the Noble and gallant Member to the reply given earlier to-day to the hon. Member for East Hull (Mr. Lumley). As regards the second part of the question, I would refer to the reply given yesterday to the hon. Member for Bucks (Captain Bowyer).

Viscount CURZON: Is it not the case that the right hon. Gentleman has not answered the question of the hon. Member for East Hull (Mr. Lumley) at all—that he has not answered the specific point raised—and may I ask him for these figures which are required for use in the Debate to-morrow?

Mr. SHAW: I have already said the Department has not got the figures.

Viscount CURZON: May we take it that the Government have no ideas on the subject of obtaining employment for those now out of work?

UNCOVENANTED BENEFIT (SHOREDITCH).

Mr. THURTLE: 22.
asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware of the great dissatisfaction existing among insured persons in Shoreditch on account of the refusal of uncovenanted unemployment benefit in many cases in which, according to the Regulations, it should be allowed; and will he take such steps as may be necessary in order to ensure that such benefit is allowed by the Shoreditch Employment Exchange in accordance with the letter and spirit of the existing law and Regulations?

Mr. SHAW: I am not aware of the position to which my hon. Friend alludes, but if he will give, me details of any specific cases in which it is alleged that uncovenanted benefit has been wrongly refused, I will gladly have inquiry made.

Mr. THURTLE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware it is not a matter of a specific case or a small number of specific cases, but of a large number of cases where self-respecting unemployed men who are entitled to uncovenanted benefit have been refused that benefit, and have been insulted by being told—[HON. MEMBERS: "Speech!"]

Mr. G. A. SPENCER: Will the questioner attend to the discrepancies and injustice in his own Department before coming into another?

MOTOR INDUSTRY (FRANCE).

Lieut. - Colonel HOWARD - BURY: 24.
asked the Minister of Labour whether, in view of the growing unemployment in the motor industry in this country owing to the repeal of the McKenna Duties and to the great demand in French factories for skilled workmen, where they are at present short-handed, he will take steps to see that the British skilled artisans that are being displaced are given information as to vacancies for similar jobs in France?

Mr. SHAW: I am not aware of any great increase in unemployment in the motor industry. As regards bringing vacancies in France to the notice of workmen in this country, arrangements for this purpose in conjunction with the French Ministry of Labour have been in operation for the last 14 months. During that period more than half the men sent to France under these arrangements were motor mechanics, and for various reasons nearly all of them have since returned to this country.

Lieut.-Colonel HOWARD-BURY: In view of the extra unemployment, will the right hon. Gentleman do his best to bring, to the notice of men dispossesed of work the fact that there is employment in France, and will he do his best to see that these men secure employment?

Mr. SHAW: I will give any applicant all the facts and leave him to judge for himself on the facts as to whether France is better than this country.

Mr. REMER: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that 300 men were dismissed last Friday at a large motor works in Lancashire? [HON. MEMBERS: "Which one?"]

JUVENILE CENTRES (GRANTS).

Mr. GRAHAM WHITE: 29.
asked the Minister of Labour if he will state, to the last convenient date, the total amount of grants from national funds to juvenile unemployment centres?

Mr. SHAW: The total amount of grants accrued to local authorities in respect of juvenile unemployment centres since the beginning of 1923 is about £67,000.

DOCK WORKERS.

Mr. WHITE: 30.
asked the Minister of Labour if he has been able to give further consideration to the arrangement whereby unemployed dock workers are obliged to sign at the Employment Exchanges twice daily; and if he can now see his way to modify this Regulation?

Mr. SHAW: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to the questions put to me on this matter on the 12th March. While the general requirement of signature twice daily must be maintained, I am always ready to consider any special cases of difficulty.

ALEXANDRIA, DUMBARTON, EXCHANGE.

Mr. WILLIAM MARTIN: 34.
asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that the unemployed in that district have to sign at the Alexandria (Dumbarton) Exchange four days a week; that this reacts against the men seeking employment, as it necessitates travelling to Dumbarton, Clydebank, and Glasgow, the, latter 20 miles away; and that the only hopeful days of visiting works are Monday and Tuesday, on which days the register has to be signed; and if he will consider reducing the number of days when signing is necessary or, alternatively, change the days for signing to the later days of the week?

Mr. SHAW: I am having inquiries made, and will communicate the result immediately to my hon. Friend.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOURS OF LABOUR (WASHINGTON CONVENTION).

Mr. NIXON: 21.
asked the Minister of Labour when he proposes to introduce a Bill to ratify the Washington Convention concerning hours of labour?

Mr. SHAW: I am not yet in a position to indicate the precise date on which I shall introduce this Bill.

Captain BERKELEY: Why should not this Bill deal with employés in the distributing trades, and particularly in shops?

Mr. SPEAKER: That point does not arise.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOME TRAINING CENTRES.

Mr. D. G. SOMERVILLE: 25.
asked the Minister of Labour the number and nature of the home-training classes proposed and now in existence; and whether there has been any objection and, if so, of what nature to this policy?

Mr. SHAW: The Central Committee on Women's Training and Employment inform me that the existing number of home-training centres is 57, with accommodation for 2,530 women and girls. 12 more are about to open and a further 13 are under consideration. They provide instruction for unemployed women in domestic and allied subjects. I am not aware of any recent objection to this training.

Mr. SOMERVILLE: Are these centres taken advantage of?

Mr. SHAW: My information is "Yes."

Oral Answers to Questions — GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS.

MINISTRY OF LABOUR (STATISTICS DIVISION).

Mr. E. BROWN: 26.
asked the Minister of Labour the number of officials employed in the Statistical Department of the Ministry of Labour in the years 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, and 1924, respectively?

Mr. SHAW: The number of officers employed in the Statistics Branch of the Ministry of Labour on the 1st April in each of the years referred to in the question is as follows:


1920
…
…
…
…
252


1921
…
…
…
…
391


1922
…
…
…
…
241


1923
…
…
…
…
153


1924
…
…
…
…
162

Mr. BROWN: Does the right hon. Gentleman consider his staff is large enough, in view of the appetite of Members of this House for statistics?

Mr. SHAW: I am positively certain the staff would have to be materially strengthened if I had to give the information asked for by hon. Members.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir FREDERICK HALL: 35.
asked the Minister of Labour whether, bearing in mind the heavy and growing expenditure incurred in the
maintenance of the statistics division of the Ministry of Labour, amounting now to nearly £60,000 a year, he will appoint a Departmental Committee to inquire into the organisation of the division with a view to adding to its usefulness and ensuring that information of obvious interest to the House and to the public, such, for instance, as particulars of the extent to which aliens participate in unemployment benefit, shall be readily available?

Mr. SHAW: The expenditure upon the statistics division of the Ministry of Labour in 1921–22 was £97,337 as compared with the estimate for the current year of £59,602. This much reduced figure shows a comparatively small increase over last year's estimate, which is principally due to an anticipated additional expenditure in connection with Trade Boards Acts. I am entirely satisfied with the method and results of the work which the division has been able to carry out with the reduced staff at its disposal, and I see no reason for the appointment of such a committee as is suggested.

Sir F. HALL: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think it advisable to get the information in regard to aliens?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: Can the right hon. Gentleman say why, as there are nearly 200 still employed in this Department, he cannot give the information asked for in this House?

Mr. SHAW: If the hon. Member will consider the work of this Department and the ramifications of the Ministry of Labour, he will find that they are worked to the top of their bent.

Sir F. HALL: Does the right hon. Gentleman not think it is sometimes penny-wise and pound-foolish to adopt such a policy?

INDIA STORES DEPOT (INDUSTRIAL DISPUTE).

Mr. HOFFMAN: 31.
asked the Minister of Labour if he is aware of the dispute existing between the men employed at the India stores depot, who are in receipt of wages amounting to from 44s. to 48s. per week, and the Indian Government; if his Department has offered its services to try and secure a settlement; and, if so, with what result?

Mr. SHAW: The dispute has been reported to me by the Union, and I am at present in communication with the High Commissioner for India in the matter.

ENGINEERING TRADES (TRADE UNION RESTRICTIONS).

Sir WILLIAM DAVISON: 28.
asked the Minister of Labour whether his attention has been drawn to cases in which trade unions in the engineering industry have placed limitations on the number of automatic lathes and other automatic machinery which may be operated by individual workmen in the motor and other similar branches of the trade whereby the output of the industry is handicapped as compared with the freedom from restraint possessed by American and other foreign workers in engineering trades; and whether he proposes to take powers to deal with the matter?

Mr. SHAW: My attention has not been drawn to cases of the kind to which the hon. Member refers. As the hon. Member is probably aware, there are agreed arrangements for the discussion of working conditions in the industry by the employers' and workers' organisations, and I see no reason to interfere in the matter.

Sir W. DAVISON: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that the facts are as stated in my question—that there is interference with a number of men working with automatic instruments—

Mr. MILLS: Rubbish!

Earl WINTERTON: On a point of Order. When an hon. Member puts a perfectly proper question to a Minister, is he not entitled to ask that question without an hon. Gentleman on the other side calling out the most offensive term "rubbish"?

Mr. MILLS: Is it not to be presumed that an hon. Member of this House asking a question in relation to a particular industry should know the elementary facts about that industry?

Mr. SPEAKER: Hon. Members will please allow me to conduct these proceedings. The interruption was quite irregular, and should not have been made.

Sir W. DAVISON: I disregard the interruption. May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the facts stated in the question are not within his knowledge, and does he not think it desirable, in view of the urgency of getting the largest possible output from our factories, that he should take some steps in the matter to stop these restrictions?

Mr. MILLS: rose
—

Mr. SPEAKER: That is a repetition of the question on the Paper.

Sir W. DAVISON: On a point of Order. The Minister said there were certain means of dealing with this matter, and my supplementary question was whether he, as Minister of Labour, did not think it desirable that he should take some steps to deal with it.

Mr. MILLS: Deal with it as a sweated industry.

Mr. SPEAKER: I understood the Minister's reply to cover that point.

Oral Answers to Questions — PARENTAL POWERS (BOARDS OF GUARDIANS).

Mr. R. JACKSON: 36.
asked the Minister of Health whether he is prepared to consider the desirability of amending Section 1, Sub-section (1) of the Poor Law Act, 1899, by substituting 21 years for 18 years of age as the limit of age of vesting of parental powers in the guardians where the guardians consider that, in the interests of the person with respect to whom a resolution of vesting is passed, the extension of the age limit is necessary or desirable?

The MINISTER of HEALTH (Mr. Wheatley): As I have said in reply to previous questions. I am not aware of any sufficient ground for introducing legislation for this purpose.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOUSING.

BUILDING LABOUR, MIDDLESBROUGH.

Mr. T. THOMSON: 37.
asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that the Middlesbrough Corporation, having regard to the slow rate of progress in their existing housing schemes, have recently held conferences with the local
building trade operatives who have guaranteed to find the necessary labour for a scheme for providing houses by direct labour; and, under these circumstances, will he reconsider his refusal to allow the Middlesbrough Corporation to erect 30 houses by direct labour?

Mr. WHEATLEY: I am prepared to reopen this question, and have arranged for my officers to discuss the question raised with representatives of the local authority.

BETHNAL GREEN (NURSES' QUARTERS).

Mr. PERCY HARRIS: 39.
asked the Minister of Health whether he has refused permission to the Bethnal Green Board of Guardians to build rooms over their existing building to provide accommodation for their nurses; whether he is aware that it is necessary that they should have accommodation near their work so that they can tend their patients; and whether he will receive a deputation from the board on the subject?

Mr. WHEATLEY: I understand that the need for this additional accommodation is not very urgent, and I have accordingly suggested that in view of the shortage of building labour it should be postponed. I am, however, quite prepared to consider any further representations which the guardians may desire to submit to me.

Mr. HARRIS: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there are no rooms where these nurses can be accommodated, owing to the overcrowded conditions in the neighbourhood, and will he consider the use of concrete instead of bricks, if bricks are not available, for the upper floor?

Mr. WHEATLEY: Yes, I am prepared to consider that and any other point that may be raised in this connection.

BUILDING INDUSTRY.

Mr. HARDIE: 40.
asked the Minister of Health whether he can explain why a term of years of apprenticeship is specified in the report on the building industry, while adopting the principle of admission to these trades by test; and whether, if a man applied for a test and could perform it without being able to specify any consecutive number of years as an apprentice, he would be employed in any of these trades?

Mr. WHEATLEY: I will make inquiry from the Housing Committee on the point mentioned and inform my hon. Friend in due course.

Mr. HARDIE: Arising oat of this somewhat serious question, I want to ask for an assurance from the Minister, if that be possible, that nothing will be done to interfere with the present method of apprenticeship in our trade. I want that assurance now.

Mr. WHEATLEY: I have no intention of submitting legislation that would interfere with industrial relations and the apprenticeship system in this country. That is a matter for the trade unions and the employers themselves.

Mr. HARDIE: Then why is it that what I have stated in my question is contained in the report; if it be wrong, why is it there, and if it be right, why should the right hon. Gentleman make inquiry?

Mr. MASTERMAN: What is the Housing Committee of which the right hon. Gentleman is going to make inquiry, and if it is the Building Committee, is he prepared to accept the decision of that Committee as controlling the building industry of this country?

Mr. WHEATLEY: No, I am not prepared to accept that, and it is as a matter of courtesy to the hon. Member who puts the question and to the House that I will endeavour to obtain the information for my hon. Friend.

LOCAL AUTHORITIES' SCHEMES.

Mr. A. SOMERVILLE: 44.
asked the Minister of Health whether the proposed Government Housing Bill will enable a local authority, which has received sanction for a scheme under the 1923 Housing Act, to carry out the scheme under the provisions of the proposed Bill?

Mr. WHEATLEY: I would suggest that the hon. Member should await the introduction of the Bill.

Mr. SOMERVILLE: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when he will introduce that Bill?

Mr. WHEATLEY: I think I state, in reply to a subsequent question on the Paper, that, without giving any definite pledge, I hope to introduce it before Whitsuntide.

Mr. PRINGLE: Introduce it?

RENT RESTRICTIONS AND HOUSING.

Sir K. WOOD: 49.
asked the Prime Minister whether he proposes to introduce any further legislation relating to rent restriction or evictions?

The PRIME MINISTER: I can add nothing to the answer which I gave to the hon. Member in reply to his question of the 19th May.

Sir K. WOOD: Can the right hon. Gentleman indicate when he will be able to deal with this important matter?

BUILDING MATERIALS (COST).

Mr. LAMBERT: 57.
asked the Minister of Health if he can give the reason for the increase in the cost of building parlour-houses from £386 in January last to £425 in April; and when he anticipates the cost of building houses will be reduced correspondingly with the cost of living to about 75 per cent. above pre-War prices?

Mr. WHEATLEY: The increase, due to the actual increase in market price of materials and in rates of wages since January last, is equivalent, on the average, to about £5 10s. per non-parlour house. I hope that with the adoption of the Government's proposals difficulties of shortage of labour and materials will be removed, and that the excess cost may be sensibly reduced.

Mr. LAMBERT: How can the Minister of Health say that the increase, due to labour and material, is only £5 10s., when the houses have gone up £40 a piece?

Mr. WHEATLEY: I can only say that that is the amount of increase due to the increase in the price of materials. I have no doubt the other part of the increase is due to the vigorous operation of private enterprise.

Viscount WOLMER: What is the right hon. Gentleman going to do to prevent these prices continuing to rise?

Sir F. HALL: Are we to understand that the attitude of the Government is that of being entirely opposed to private enterprise?

Mr. WHEATLEY: I take it that the attitude of those who are questioning the increase in prices is opposed to private enterprise!

Viscount WOLMER: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer my question as to what the Government propose to do to check this rise in prices?

Mr. SPEAKER: The question of the Noble Lord is hardly one to be answered at Question time; it is a matter for debate.

Mr. PRINGLE: Can the right hon. Gentleman explain why private enterprise has only begun to operate vigorously since he became Minister of Health? [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer!"]

Mr. SPEAKER: These points, no doubt, are very interesting, but they are hardly suitable for dealing with by question and answer.

GOVERNMENT HOUSING BILL.

Sir K. WOOD: 58.
asked the Minister of Health whether he proposes to introduce a Housing Bill or make any statement on the Government's housing proposals before the Whitsuntide Recess?

Mr. WHEATLEY: While giving no pledge on the matter, I may say that I hope to be able to introduce the Bill before the Whitsuntide Recess.

Sir K. WOOD: Will the right hon. Gentleman, if he is unable to introduce a Bill before the Whitsuntide Recess, make a statement concerning the whole of the Government programme in this connection?

Mr. WHEATLEY: That is a purely hypothetical question.

Captain BERKELEY: Does the main reply of the Minister mean that the Bill will be debated before the Whitsuntide Recess?

Mr. WHEATLEY: I am hopeful that the Leader of the House will be able to arrange for a discussion.

Mr. P. HARRIS: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that the delay in announcing the Government policy is actually stopping building almost all over the country? Local authorities do not want to embark upon the old scheme before they know what the new scheme is?

Mr. WHEATLEY: I can appreciate the fear of that, but if building is stopped tradesmen will be unemployed, and I have no information that they are unemployed.

BRICKS.

Sir K. WOOD: 59.
asked the Minister of Health what action, if any, he is taking to augment the supply of bricks by British manufacturers?

Mr. WHEATLEY: The question of brick supply is under consideration in connection with the Government's housing proposals, and I am not at present in a position to make a statement.

Sir F. HALL: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that one of the most important factors of the building of houses is the production of bricks, and what are the Government doing to get some?

Mr. W. THORNE: Have the Government any intention at all of controlling the brickfields?

Mr. WHEATLEY: The difficulty—and many other difficulties associated with the problem of housing—is due to the breakdown of private enterprise.

Viscount WOLMER: What is the Government policy?

Mr. SULLIVAN: The Coalition Government told us what they wanted and put it on paper, but when they started to build there were no bricks, and—[HON. MEMBERS: "Speech!"]

Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member had better let me see that question.

Oral Answers to Questions — EX-SERVICE TRAINEES (HEALTH INSURANCE BENEFIT).

Mr. WHITELEY: 38.
asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that ex-service men in receipt of a pension and receiving training at Government instructional factories are being paid National Health Insurance benefit by some societies and are being refused by others; and whether he will issue general instructions to the societies on the matter?

Mr. WHEATLEY: The fact that an ex-service man in receipt of a pension is undergoing a course of training at a Government instructional factory does not in itself afford any evidence that he is entitled to receive sickness or disablement benefit under the National Health Insurance Acts. The condition for the payment of these benefits is that the insured I person should be rendered incapable of
work by some specific disease or bodily or mental disablement, and it rests with the approved society of which any individual trainee is a member to decide whether or not this condition is satisfied in his case during any period in respect of which benefit is claimed. A member who is dissatisfied with his society's decision has a right of appeal in accordance with the procedure laid down in the rules of the society. An official Circular explaining the position has already been sent to all approved societies.

Oral Answers to Questions — ALIENS (POOR LAW RELIEF).

Sir W. DAVISON: 41.
asked the Minister of Health whether he can inform the House as to the precise, or approximate, number of aliens who are in receipt of relief from guardians in the East End and in other parts of London?

Mr. WHEATLEY: I regret that the information desired by the hon. Member is not available.

Mr. HARMSWORTH: Have these guardians any power to prevent the payment of relief to aliens?

Mr. MILLS: Is there any necessity to confine this to the East End of London? Would it not be possible to give an interesting list of aliens living in idleness in the West End?

Mr. WHEATLEY: I can only say that if the guardians exceed their powers, they are subject to the ordinary laws.

Oral Answers to Questions — LOCAL GOVERNMENT OFFICERS SUPERANNUATION ACT, 1922.

Mr. NIXON: 42.
asked the Minister of Health how many local authorities have adopted the Local Government and other Officers Superannuation Act, 1922?

Mr. WHEATLEY: Sixty-six authorities have adopted the Act.

Oral Answers to Questions — PUBLIC HEALTH (CONSULTATIVE COUNCILS).

Mr. ROBERT RICHARDSON: 43.
asked the Minister of Health whether the consultative councils, authorised by the
Ministry of Health Act to advise him upon matters relating to public health administration have ever been set up; if so, upon how many occasions have they met; and when was the last meeting?

Mr. WHEATLEY: The answer to the first part of the question is "Yes." Four consultative, councils were set up for England and one for Wales, under Orders in Council made in 1919. With my hon. Friend's permission, I will circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT the particulars asked for in the remainder of the question.

Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE: Is the advisory body which brought out the extremely useful interim Report on the hospitals scheme two or three years ago continuing its labours?

Mr. WHEATLEY: I would like the hon. and gallant Gentleman to give me notice of that question.

The particulars are as follow:


CONSULTATIVE COUNCILS.


Consultative Council on
No. of Meetings held.
Date of last Meeting.


England.




Medical and Allied Services.
31
1st July, 1921.


National Health Insurance (Approved Societies' Work).
34
14th March, 1924.


Local Health Administration.
12
7th July, 1921.


General Health Questions.
24
7th December, 1921.


Wales.




Welsh Consultative Council.
15
18th March, 1924.

Oral Answers to Questions — DEVOLUTION (COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY).

Mr. AYLES: 45.
asked the Prime Minister whether any agreement has been come to with regard to the constitution of the Committee of Inquiry into the question of Home Rule for Scotland, Wales, and England, and the date when they will commence their work?

The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald): This matter is being
dealt with, but a little time must elapse before the Government are in a position to make a statement.

Mr. MACPHERSON: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether this will be a Committee of this House or a Joint Committee of the two Houses?

The PRIME MINISTER: That is one of the matters which is under consideration. There is a great deal to be said for this House and a great deal to be said for the other.

Mr. STURROCK: Is it the intention of the Government to place the whole subject of devolution back to where it stood before the Lowther Committee sat and reported most valuably upon it?

The PRIME MINISTER: That is one of the matters under consideration.

Mr. AYLES: If I put a question down in a fortnight's time, has the Prime Minister any hopes of being able to give a definite answer then?

The PRIME MINISTER: Yes, I think that will be all right.

Mr. PRINGLE: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what good he expects this Committee to do?

The PRIME MINISTER: To clear the air.

Oral Answers to Questions — PERMANENT COURT OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE.

Mr. J. HARRIS: 46.
asked the Prime Minister how many members of the Council and States members of the League of Nations, respectively, have accepted Article 36 of the Protocol of the International Court of Justice; whether he is prepared to indicate a date by which he anticipates being in a position to make and publish a decision on this subject; and, if not, will he provide some early opportunity for a discussion upon a matter of such importance to world peace?

Mr. PONSONBY: I regret that I cannot at present add anything to the answer given last week to the hon. Member on the subject.

Mr. HARRIS: Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that I have been asking ques-
tions on this subject for three months, and that we are no further than we were at the beginning?

Mr. PONSONBY: The hon. Member will realise that this is a very important question, which requires careful investigation, and that the Government have only been in office for a short time. No undue delay has occurred.

Mr. HARRIS: I quite realise the importance of it, and for that reason I give notice that I will take the earliest possible opportunity of raising this question in debate.

Oral Answers to Questions — GOVERNMENT BILLS.

Sir WALTER de FRECE: 47.
asked the Prime Minister if he can now make any statement as to the official legislation which the Government intends to endeavour to pass into law before the Summer Recess?

The PRIME MINISTER: No, Sir. It would be impossible for any Government to make such a statement at this stage of the Session.

Sir W. de FRECE: Will it be possible to give the information before the Recess?

The PRIME MINISTER: There is a usual time for making these melancholy announcements.

Mr. PRINGLE: Can the right hon. Gentleman give any idea as to when the Summer Recess will be?

The PRIME MINISTER: I hope when summer comes.

Mr. PRINGLE: Does the Prime Minister intend to adhere to the view frequently expressed by Members of the Labour party that the House should rise before 31st July?

The PRIME MINISTER: I should like it very much if the House would do so.

Oral Answers to Questions — IMPERIAL PREFERENCE (JAMAICA).

Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: 48.
asked the Prime Minister whether he is aware that, in consequence of the
unwillingness of His Majesty's Government to maintain the effective preference upon Empire sugar at the figure previously existing, the elected members of the Legislative Council of Jamaica have in conference unanimously resolved to propose in council that the preference given by Jamaica to British cotton goods be halved, and that Jamaica be permitted to negotiate reciprocity agreements with countries outside the Empire; and whether His Majesty's Government propose to give instructions to the official members of the Legislative Council as to the attitude to be assumed by them towards such proposals of the elected members?

The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Thomas): The Prime Minister has asked me to reply, but I can only refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Ormsby-Gore) on the 19th May.

Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: May I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman realises—as no doubt he does—that the answer to which he has been good enough to refer me does not deal with the last part of the question, which is the crux of the whole matter, namely, whether His Majesty's Government propose to give any instructions and, if so, what instructions, to the official members of the Legislative Council of Jamaica?

Mr. THOMAS: My hon. Friend is aware that there is a day to be allocated to the general discussion of the Preference question.

Sir WILLIAM JOYNSON-HICKS: Will the right hon. Gentleman give us an assurance that, until that Debate has taken place, he will not send any instructions to the official members of the Legislative Council?

Mr. THOMAS: That is contrary to what I said. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend appreciates what he is asking for. I have already intimated that a Debate will take place, and that it would be unwise to anticipate that Debate.

Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: Then may I ask this—If before any instructions are sent to the official members of the Legislative Council in Jamaica the right hon. Gentleman will acquaint this House with the facts?

Mr. THOMAS: That hardly arises. If my hon. Friend wants to put a question at any time asking what instructions have been given, certainly he will get an answer.

Captain BERKELEY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a similar attitude has been taken by the Colonists in British Guiana, and it is very necessary for the Government to make up their minds and, above all, notify the public what their attitude towards these Colonies is to be?

Mr. THOMAS: I am amazed to hear that question, because the complaint is that the Government have made up their minds.

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Does not the right hon. Gentleman see the propriety of abstaining from giving any direct instructions in regard to this matter until the House has decided one way or the other? The House may not decide in accordance with the right hon. Gentleman's views.

Mr. PRINGLE: If the Government have made up their minds can the right hon. Gentleman say what instructions he has given, or intends to give?

Mr. THOMAS: Any question put on the Paper will be answered. This was not on the Paper. When it is, I will answer it.

Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I will put the question down again.

Oral Answers to Questions — COST-OF-LIVING (INDEX FIGURES).

Mr. J. GARDNER: 50.
asked the Prime Minister whether he is prepared to appoint a Committee to review the method of compiling the cost-of-living index figures, in view of the uneasiness in the minds of large numbers of workers whose wages are regulated by wage agreements based upon it?

Mr. SHAW: I have been asked to reply. I would refer the hon. Member to my reply to questions on this subject by the hon. Members for the Attercliffe (Mr. C. Wilson) and South-East Essex (Mr. Hoffman) Divisions on 20th February, of which I am sending him a copy.

Oral Answers to Questions — POLICE (SCOTLAND AND NORTHERN IRELAND).

Mr. C. HEALY: 51.
asked the Prime Minister what was the cost to the Imperial Exchequer of the police force in Scotland and Northern Ireland, respectively, for the years ending March, 1923, and March, 1924?

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. W. Graham): As regards Scotland, the amounts paid from Votes of Parliament were


1922–23
…
…
…
£713,614


1923–24
…
…
…
£684,935


These sums, together with an additional payment in each year of £220,000 from the Local Taxation (Scotland) Account, represent approximately one half of the cost of the Scottish police. As regards Northern Ireland, there is no Imperial contribution to the cost of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The amount of the special contribution made to the cost of the special constabulary for the two years in question was stated in the reply which I gave to the hon. Member or, the 6th May.

Mr. HEALY: Does the hon. Gentleman not think, in view of the peaceful condition of Northern Ireland, this money might be devoted to housing or unemployment?

Mr. GRAHAM: It is impossible to give a reply to a question of that kind at the moment, because, as my hon. Friend knows, there are matters which have still to be adjusted by the Joint Exchequer Board. Beyond that I cannot go to-day.

Mr. HEALY: Does the hon. Gentleman propose to summon a meeting of the Joint Exchequer Board soon?

Mr. GRAHAM: I am afraid I can give no pledge on that point.

Mr. HEALY: Has the hon. Gentleman ever summoned a meeting of the Joint Exchequer Board?

Mr. SPEAKER: Perhaps the hon. Member will put the question down.

Oral Answers to Questions — WHITSUNTIDE RECESS.

Mr. BLACK: 52.
asked the Prime Minister when he proposes that the House
shall rise for the Whitsuntide Recess; and on what date he proposes that the House shall reassemble?

The PRIME MINISTER: I would ask the hon. Member to await the statement which my right hon. Friend proposes to make on business to-morrow afternoon.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRANSPORT.

LONDON BRIDGES.

Viscount CURZON: 53.
asked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the new situation created by the failure of Waterloo Bridge, before any public money is actually paid from the Road Fund towards work in connection with St. Paul's Bridge, an opportunity will be given to Parliament to discuss the matter?

The PRIME MINISTER: The Government are unable to give special facilities for such a discussion; but if there were any general desire on the part of the House, no doubt arrangements could be made through the usual channels for discussion of the Ministry of Transport Vote in Committee of Supply.

Viscount CURZON: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think, in view of the very large expenditure, nearly £1,000,000, to be spent on the approaches to St. Paul's Bridge, Parliament should certainly be given an opportunity of discussing the matter?

Mr. MILLS: Will the Prime Minister take into consideration the report that the steamship "Wandle" during the War, in Government service, rammed one of the pillars of Waterloo Bridge, and, it so, could not part of the cost be regarded as arising out of the War period?

The PRIME MINISTER: I must have notice of that. With regard to the other question, arrangements can be made in the usual way for raising such a discussion in Committee of Supply.

Mr. BECKER: 67.
asked the First Commissioner of Works if, as Waterloo Bridge is closed to traffic, he will consider putting a pontoon bridge over the Thames alongside the existing bridge for the convenience of pedestrians?

The MINISTER of TRANSPORT (Mr. Gosling): I have been asked to answer this question. The question of the erec-
tion of any temporary bridge falls within the competence of the London County Council.

Mr. BECKER: This bridge is the only means for my constituents to get across the river; are they to depend on the London County Council?

Mr. GOSLING: This is a matter for the London County Council, but I am fully alive as to its importance, and am in close touch with the Council.

Mr. LINFIELD: 80.
asked the Minister of Transport whether, in view of the closing of Waterloo Bridge, and the urgent need of increased facilities for transpontine traffic over the Thames, he will take immediate steps to deal with the matter in a comprehensive manner?

Mr. GOSLING: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer given on 20th May to the hon. Member for South Kensington, of which I am sending him a copy. I am, however, keeping closely in touch with the London County Council on the whole matter.

Mr. LINFIELD: Does the reply deal with the comprehensive scheme?

Mr. GOSLING: Yes.

RURAL ROADS.

Mr. F. GOULD: 83.
asked the Minister of Transport whether any sum of money has been placed at the disposal of his Department for the purpose of assisting in the repair and maintenance of rural district roads; what is the amount, if any; and what amounts have been allocated?

Mr. GOSLING: No special sum of money has been placed at my disposal for the purposes indicated in the question. As I have recently explained on several occasions, in answer to questions, a sum of £2,750,000 has been set aside from the Road Fund revenues for 1923–24 and 1924–25, for the improvement of important roads in rural areas. The total amount that has been allocated up to the present out of this sum is £2,502,035.

Colonel ASHLEY: In view of the very small sum remaining to be distributed, will the hon. Gentleman take into consideration that, in view of the fact that the Road Fund is an increasing amount, he should give more to this very excellent object?

Mr. HOFFMAN: What does the hon. Gentleman mean by important rural roads?

Oral Answers to Questions — POST OFFICE.

WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY.

Sir WALTER de FRECE: 54.
asked the Prime Minister if he can now make any statement as to the policy of the Government with respect to the development of wireless telegraphy in this country?

The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Hartshorn): I have been asked to reply to this question. I am not yet in a position to make any statement on the subject.

Captain BENN: Can the right hon. Gentleman say now whether the Government is going to remove the embargo on the importation of foreign sets?

Mr. REMER: In view of the prejudicial effects on the country, will the right hon. Gentleman let us know when he will be able to make a statement on the question?

Mr. HARTSHORN: I can assure the hon. Gentleman there will be no delay beyond what is absolutely unavoidable in arriving at a decision.

Mr. BECKER: May I ask whether the delay is not caused through negotiations with the Marconi Company with regard to the Wireless Chain?

Mr. HARTSHORN: Partly that, and partly due to the fact that negotiations between ourselves and the Dominions have not yet been concluded.

SOUTH AMERICAN WIRELESS CONSORTIUM.

Mr. BAKER: 75.
asked the Postmaster-General the names of the foreign companies associated with the Marconi Company in the South American Wireless Consortium; whether the consortium agreement provides that the wireless stations of the consortium companies shall not communicate with stations belonging to any party outside the consortium; whether the consortium seeks to establish a wireless monopoly; and whether the Marconi Company took the initiative in forming the consortium?

Mr. HARTSHORN: The foreign companies associated with the Marconi Company in the South American Wireless Consortium are the Radio Corporation of America, the Wireless Telegraph Company (Compagnie Générale de T.S.F.) of France and the Wireless Telegraph Company (Gesellschaft für Drahtlose Telegraphie) of Germany. The answer to the second part of the question is in the affirmative. I have no information as to which of the companies took the initiative in forming the consortium, and I should prefer not to express an opinion as to the objects for which it was formed.

FACILITIES (HADLEIGH, ESSEX).

Mr. HOFFMAN: 76.
asked the Postmaster-General if his attention has been drawn to the request of the Parish Council of Hadleigh, Essex, for improved postal facilities; and, in view of the growth of this district, if he will give favourable consideration to the request?

Mr. HARTSHORN: An application for improved postal facilities was received from the Hadleigh Parish Council a few days ago, and is now under consideration.

DERBY DRAW (BOOTLE).

Lieut.-Colonel JAMES: 77.
asked the Postmaster-General whether the Post Office are confiscating the incoming mail addressed to Mr. Tom Garnett, of 5, Thornton Avenue, Orrell, Bootle, Lancashire, the organising secretary of the Mammoth Derby Labour Subscription Draw, promoted by the Bottle Trades Council and Labour party, tickets for which are advertised as being circulated amongst organisations affiliated to the Labour party only?

Mr. HARTSHORN: I have no information as to the draw referred to, but I am sending a copy of the hon. Member's question to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for such action as he thinks necessary.

Mr. FOOT: Is the draw in question one which has been publicly advertised, and, if so, will this defiance of the law be dealt with by the Government?

Mr. HARTSHORN: I have already said that I have no information about it.

Mr. TURNER: Will the Stock Exchange draw be taken into the same consideration?

Oral Answers to Questions — PROFITEERING.

Mr. SMEDLEY CROOKE: 55.
asked the Prime Minister whether it is the intention of His Majesty's Government to adopt the suggestion recently put forward to investigate the question of profiteering and middlemen's profits; and whether he will recommend the appointment of a Royal Commission to consider the whole matter?

The PRIME MINISTER: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer given by the Lord Privy Seal on the 8th May, in reply to a question by my hon. Friend the Member for East Bristol (Mr. Baker), to which I have at present nothing to add.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND INDUSTRY.

Sir F. HALL: 56.
asked the Prime Minister what measures the Government propose to take to protect the industry of this country, and to secure for its producers a fair share of the world's markets?

The PRIME MINISTER: The Government believe that their general policy will result in a stimulus to trade and industry generally, as has been proved to be so up to date, and that both regarding home and foreign markets.

Sir F. HALL: Is it not a fact that the right hon. Gentleman contributed to a paper called "Socialism and Society," in which he indicated that it was necessary they should take such measures as are referred to in the question?

Mr. SPEAKER: This is not the time for a speech.

Oral Answers to Questions — MURDER CASES (NEWSPAPER ARTICLES).

Captain BERKELEY: 66.
asked the Attorney-General whether his attention has been called to the nature of the publicity in connection with the Eastbourne and Byflcet murder cases, and in particular to the article in the "Manchester Guardian" of 15th May, in which a letter is published purporting to have been written by the victim of the Eastbourne murder on the day prior to her death in which the accused is referred to by name; and whether, seeing that such publication is calculated to prejudice the accused on trial, although the letter in question would be inadmissible in
evidence, he will say what steps he has taken or proposes to take to prevent further publications of the kind?

The ATTORNEY - GENERAL (Sir Patrick Hastings): My attention has been called to certain publications in connection with one of these cases, and proceedings have already been instituted against the persons concerned. It is my intention to exercise all the powers at my command to prevent the publication by any person or newspaper of matter calculated to prejudice the fair trial of cases pending, either to the detriment of the accused or to the Crown.

Captain BERKELEY: In view of the necessity of strengthening the law in this matter in order to prevent publications of this kind, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman consider advising the Government to introduce legislation for the purpose, or, alternatively, to give facilities for a recent Bill which has been Introduced?

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: I do not agree that the law is insufficient and requires strengthening. The powers that I have are ample.

Mr. STURROCK: May the House take it that the hon. and learned Gentleman thinks that the Indictable Offences (Regulation of Reports) Bill introduced by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Central Nottingham (Captain Berkeley) the other day is quite unnecessary?

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: In my view, quite unnecessary!

Mr. B. TURNER: Is it possible for the hon. and learned Gentleman to make an appeal to newspaper owners for clean newspapers on Sundays, particularly for family reading?

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Let me say, in answer to that question, that I do not think any appeal is likely to be very successful.

Oral Answers to Questions — THE MALL (SEATS).

Mr. J. GARDNER: 70.
asked the First Commissioner of Works why no seats are provided along the Mall; and will he take steps to provide seats for the convenience of the public?

The FIRST COMMISSIONER of WORKS (Mr. Jowett): Seats were provided in the Mall prior to its reconstruction in 1903, and in the light of experience the police are strongly opposed to their being replaced. I regret, therefore, that I cannot adopt the hon. Member's suggestion.

Earl WINTERTON: Can the right hon. Gentleman give any reason why that conclusion has been come to, in view of the fact that there are seats in Hyde Park, and other parts adjoining?

Mr. GARDNER: Why are there seats adjacent in St. James's Park, and the police have no objection?

Mr. JOWETT: I can only say that the police have strongly advised against it on account of the difficulties of control. The seats there are liable to misuse.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE.

FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE.

Mr. BECKER: 72.
asked the Minister of Agriculture the number of cattle which

During the Year.
Temporary Abatements.
Permanent Reductions.
Total Relief.







£
s.
d.
£
s.
d.
£
s.
d.


1921
…
…
…
…
516
6
5
Nil.
516
6
5


1922
…
…
…
…
2,338
12
7
612
16
2
2,951
8
9


1923
…
…
…
…
2,930
14
11
1,471
15
2
4,402
10
1










Total
7,870
5
3

FARM PRODUCE (STATISTICS).

Mr. F. GOULD: 74.
asked the Minister of Agriculture the comparative prices of farm produce in 1914 and the present market prices, the pre-War agricultural wage rates and hours worked, and the rates and hours obtaining to-day?

Mr. SMITH: It is estimated that market prices of agricultural products in England and Wales in April, 1924, were, on the whole, 56 per cent. above the prices of these products in April, 1914. It is estimated that the average wage of ordinary labourers in 1914 was equivalent to about 18s. per week, as compared with 28s. at the present time. I am unable to estimate the average hours worked in 1914, but the present working week is about 52 hours for England as a whole.

have been slaughtered during the present outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease; and what is the value of them in total?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of AGRICULTURE (Mr. W. R. Smith): The total number of cattle slaughtered or authorised to be slaughtered, up to and including the 20th instant, is 103,775, and the estimated compensation payable for these animals is £2,873,360.

SMALL HOLDINGS (SOMERSET).

Mr. F. GOULD: 73.
asked the Minister of Agriculture the amount of reduction of rent made to the smallholders in the County of Somerset during each of the following years 1921, 1922 and 1923?

Mr. SMITH: According to the Ministry's records, the amounts allowed to smallholders in the County of Somerset in the form either of temporary abatements or of permanent reductions of rent were as follow:

Viscount WOLMER: Does that mean that the wages paid in agriculture are considerably higher, relatively, than the prices realised by the farmers?

Oral Answers to Questions — ARMY PRE-WAR PENSIONERS.

Mr. E. BROWN: 79.
asked the Secretary of State for War the conditions of service under which the pre-War pensioner was enrolled; and if he was liable to service up to 50 years of age?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Major Attlee): Pre-War pensioners as such were not enrolled, but the Regulations laid down that they were liable to service in emergency up to 50 years of age. This liability, however, was not enforced, since on an examination of
the matter shortly before the outbreak of the Great War, it transpired that the legality of the Regulations on this point was doubtful. The Regulations have now been altered and do not purport to make pensioners liable for service.

Mr. BROWN: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that pension Form 446, paragraph 6, states that if the pensioner does not come up he will lose his pension?

Major ATTLEE: I will make inquiries.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCHOOL ACCOMMODATION, STONEBROOM.

Mr. DUNCAN: 86.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware that for some years now the elementary schools at Stonebroom, Derbyshire, have been propped up by huge baulks of timber to prevent them falling down; that the buildings are in an exceedingly and admittedly dangerous condition; that parents are threatening to keep their children away from school; whether the rebuilding of these schools is being held up by the local education authority or the Board of Education; and will he take such steps as may bring to an end the danger to the lives of children attending the schools?

The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Trevelyan): I am aware that the buildings of the Stonebroom council school are in a most unsatisfactory condition, but steps are now in progress for providing a complete new school. A new site has been selected and approved and plans have been submitted which are now under consideration. In the meantime, measures have been taken to make the ground storey of the old building secure enough for the use of the older children. The infants are housed in a temporary structure elsewhere.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

Captain WEDGWOOD BENN: May I ask the Lord Privy Seal which of the Orders he intends to take to-day? It will be within his recollection that Orders have appeared on the Paper which were not announced last Thursday, and
Order No. 4—War Charges (Validity) (No. 2) Bill—is an exempted Order, and might keep the House very late.

The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Mr. Clynes): The fourth Order on the Paper raises a question which has already been discussed, and we hope to complete the Committee stage of that Order to-night. With regard to the preceding Order of Supply, it raises a question upon which there is very nearly universal agreement.

Captain BENN: Although the right hon. Gentleman did not announce these Orders, does he intend to take the Committee stage of the Friendly Societies Bill first, and then the other four Orders, or will he omit Orders No. 1 (Auxiliary Air Force and Air Force Reserve Bill) and Order No. 3 (Supply Report, 12th May), in order that the War Charges (Validity) Bill may have a better opportunity?

Mr. CLYNES: The first Order is practically an agreed Bill, and has not been the subject of serious controversy. In these circumstances I do not think I should be pressed to make any change.

Mr. PRINGLE: But these are changes.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Does the right hon. Gentleman not think it would be reasonable in the circumstances if he did not take Order No. 3? I have no desire to obstruct Order No. 4, but I think the right hon. Gentleman will feel that the request made by the hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain Benn) is not unreasonable.

Mr. CLYNES: There has already been a Debate on Order No. 3, and on that account we are hopeful that there will be no cause for any lengthy discussion.

Captain BENN: We have no desire to obstruct any Order, but does the Deputy-Leader of the House not think it is inconvenient that, without any notice to hon. Members, his announcement of last Thursday should have been traversed and altered?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I do not want to appear to intervene unduly, but does not the right hon. Gentleman think that it would meet the general sense of the House, and, on the whole, conduce to the smooth conduct of business if, while taking the first Order, he would postpone the third Order?

Mr. CLYNES: If this request is supported on the opposite side of the House, then we must observe it. We are not our own masters, and in view of the assurance that there is no desire to obstruct business, I quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: May I offer one word of personal explanation. I hope the Deputy-Leader of the House does not think I was offering anything in the nature of a threat. I was trying to facilitate the passage of Order No. 4.

Mr. PRINGLE: Will the right hon. Gentleman, in future, when he makes a change in the order of the business of the House, give notice the day before, if possible, so that hon. Members interested in any particular Order may be in their places?

Mr. CLYNES: I do not think we have taken a course at all novel in this matter.

THAMES CONSERVANCY BILL.

Reported, with Amendments; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.

That they have agreed to—

National Health Insurance (Cost of Medical Benefit) Bill, without Amendment.

That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to facilitate the preparation of agricultural statistics." [Agricultural Returns Bill [Lords.]

And also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to authorise the sale of certain pictures bequeathed and settled by the first codicil to the will of the Right Honourable John Poyntz, Earl Spencer, deceased, and to provide for the application of the proceeds of such sale; and for other purposes." [Spencer Settled Chattels Bill [Lords.]

SPENCER SETTLED CHATTELS BILL [Lords].

Read the First time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

STANDING ORDERS.

Resolution reported from the Select Committee:

"That, in the case of the Special Report of the Examiners on the Petition for the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway Bill [Lords], they are of opinion that no Standing Orders are applicable."

Resolution agreed to.

Leave given to the Committee to make a Special Report.

Special Report brought up, and read as followeth:

Sir GEORGE CROYDON MARKS reported from the Select Committee on Standing Orders, "That, in the case of the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway [Lords] Petition for Bill, the Committee had agreed to the following Special Report:"

"The Select Committee on Standing Orders are of opinion that, in view of the fact that all references to Ireland have been deleted from the existing Standing Orders, they are unable and incompetent to examine into the Petition for the Bill."

Report to lie upon the Table.

SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES).

STANDING COMMITTEE A.

Mr. WILLIAM NICHOLSON reported from the Committee of Selection: That they had added the following Member to Standing Committee A: Mr. Sandeman.

Mr. WILLIAM NICHOLSON further reported from the Committee: That they had discharged the following Members from Standing Committee A: Mr. Pease and Mr. Percy Harris; and had appointed in substitution: Sir Thomas Inskip and Mr. Morse.

Reports to lie upon the Table.

Orders of the Day — NEW WRIT.

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That Mr. Speaker do issue his Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown to make out a New Writ for the electing of a Member to serve in this present Parliament for the Borough of Oxford in the room of Frank Gray, esquire, whose election has been declared to be void.

Question put, and agreed to.—[Mr. Phillipps.]

Orders of the Day — FRIENDLY SOCIETIES BILL [Lords].

Considered in Committee.

[Mr. ENTWISTLE in the Chair.]

CLAUSE 1.—(Qualifications for office of Chief Registrar.)

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."

Mr. RAWLINSON: I am not opposing the Bill, but I think it right to point out that this introduces a considerable change. The effect of the alteration is this: At present, no one can hold the post referred to unless he is a barrister of 12 years' standing, and this Clause is altering that, and in future will throw it open to solicitors, under certain circumstances.

Question put, and agreed to.

CLAUSE 2.—(Assurances on children's lives.)

Mr. RAWLINSON: had given notice of an Amendment, on page 2, line 20, to leave out the words "except that," and to insert instead thereof the words "applicable to industrial assurance companies."

The CHAIRMAN: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman explain his Amendment? I am not sure whether it alters the Bill.

Mr. RAWLINSON: It is simply this. I made a false point on the Second Reading though I explained it to my hon. Friend directly afterwards. I misunderstood the reading of the Bill. The Amendment is quite simple, the Clause says:
Sub-section (1) of Section four of the Industrial Assurance Act, 1923, shall be repealed from the words 'except that' to the end of the Sub-section.
The result of that would be that you would simply leave at the end of Subsection (1) the words "except that", which would be nonsense and nothing would happen. It is an obvious correction. I am only taking the opportunity of saying I am sorry I misled my hon. Friend in the construction I put on the rest of the sentence. I think he will agree it is an exceedingly difficult Clause for anyone to follow in the form in which it is drawn, being entirely legislation by reference.

The CHAIRMAN: If the hon. and learned Gentleman does not move his Amendment I will put the Question, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."

Sir K. WOOD: I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman should ask the Minister in charge of the Bill to look at the matter. I have looked at the Amendment, and I am not quite clear whether it will not make matters a little more difficult. I do not know whether my hon. Friend can speak positively, but I have some little doubt whether this may not add to the already difficult position in which the friendly societies find themselves.

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. William Graham): The point which has been raised by the hon. and learned Gentleman is comparatively simple. This Bill provides for an alteration of the Act of 1896, and it was necessary to repeal this Section in the Act of 1923. The narrow point before the Committee is whether the repeal covers the words "except that." It is a pure point of drafting whether those words are included. My advice is that there is no doubt whatever that they are so included in our Amendment, and I can give the hon. and learned Gentleman considerable precedent from the Act of 1923, which will fully bear out what we have done in this legislation. I hope, with that explanation, they will allow the Clause to pass.

Question put, and agreed to.

Clause 3 (Short title, construction and extent) ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill reported, without Amendment; read the Third time, and passed, without Amendment.

Orders of the Day — AUXILIARY AIR FORCE AND AIR FORCE RESERVE BILL [Lords].

Order for Second Reading read.

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for AIR (Mr. Leach): I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
4.0 P.M.
A few weeks ago the House ratified the scheme of home defence inaugurated by the last Government and accepted, for the time being, by this Government. Part of that scheme involved the creation of an Auxiliary Air Force and the formation of an adequate Reserve. The Bill, therefore, does not enlarge in any way the Air preparations which have already been sanctioned. It does not involve any new expediture other than that which has already been outlined and agreed to by the House. It places no obstacle in the way of our coming to an agreement with other nations for a reduction of armaments, if ever that happy event is possible. It carries out the promise I made to the House on 19th February, repeated on 28th February, and again in March. The Bill, I am pleased to say, has had a smooth passage in another place and I am confident, from the very friendly reception which the Air Estimates received at the hands of this House, that the Bill will have an equally friendly and pleasant passage here. The Air Force Act, 1917, Section 6, already enables us to raise and maintain an Auxiliary Air Force and Air Force Reserve, but the powers under that Act are not regarded by us as being sufficiently adequate. Under this Bill two new powers are sought. First of all, we seek to establish County Joint Associations under the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act, 1907, which may be administered by both the Territorial Army and Auxiliary Air Force representatives within the county, or alternatively to have them, if necessary, administered separately. The second new power that we are seeking in the Bill is to provide for immediate mobilisation in case of actual or apprehended attack in defence of the British Isles, whether or not the Army Reserve or the Air Force Reserve has been called out on active service. The Bill adds no powers to those
which are already in existence for sending a single man abroad. The power of immediate mobilisation refers both to the new Auxiliary Air Force which it is proposed to create and also to the Reserve. This power of mobilisation in case of emergency is to be conferred by Order-in-Council. Without this Bill such power will not exist. It is therefore imperative that we should have it. We have to face the facts as they are to-day. We know that in the unhappy event of war we might have an invading force of aeroplanes in this country at the actual moment of the declaration of hostilities. In so far as I am responsible to this House for the Air Force, I feel that I should be guilty of a gross dereliction of duty if I failed to seek efficiency. I cannot neglect its equipment; I cannot seek to deprive it of adequate powers to act. Though I hope there may never be another European war, though I disbelieve in wars as a means of righting wrongs or of serving mankind at all, though I fervently hope that none of my Department—splendid young men—will ever be asked to slay or will ever be slain, still I feel that it is only consistent and honest to ask Parliament for powers which are solely for the purpose of rendering the Air Force a still more highly efficient weapon.
The air weapon has altered the whole character of war. It has destroyed the advantage which this country formerly possessed through being an island, and an attack may now be as immediate as if there were no seas intervening at all. This Bill gives us the power to meet, so far as we have means to do so, such an emergency. We also propose to utilise in full the county territorial associations which are already in existence. Subject to certain exceptions which I shall mention, the new Auxiliary Air Force to be set up will be administered by county associations reinforced by air representatives acting jointly. The county territorial areas may not always meet the Air Force requirements, so in Clause 1, Subsection (2), we are seeking authority in such cases to set up special machinery. The county joint associations will have the duty of raising and administering their own air squadrons, and the training will be supervised by Royal Air Force Home Defence Headquarters. Two facts
govern the selection of appropriate stations. The first is the nearness, or otherwise, of an engineering population from whom to get our skilled mechanics, and the second consideration is the possibility of adequate aerodrome facilities.
The territorial associations have shown themselves both willing and anxious to help this new scheme, and a scheme has already been drawn up in consultation with them and the War Office. While the county joint associations proposed to be set up are expected to be the general rule for administrative purposes, we do provide for exceptions. It is possible that in odd cases the most suitable administrative unit may be a large town or a group of towns, or it may be even two counties. The Bill, therefore, gives us freedom, in Clause 1, to administer separately in those cases.
Every recruit, officer or man, agrees on enlistment to be called up and serve in the British Isles against actual or apprehended attack. Clause 5 defines the procedure for calling out for home defence purposes both the Auxiliary Air Force and the Reserve. Clause 3 gives power to form a new kind of Reserve for home defence service only. This is not so much a fresh recruiting power as it is an alteration of conditions of service, so as to create a new class of Reserve. It is, in fact, a Citizens' Air Force. The new conditions of service hon. Members will find set out in Sub-section (2).
It may be asked why we need to form an Auxiliary Air Force and a Reserve Force as well. The reason is that both are experimental, and we wish to explore them. We want to try them, and we want to gain experience as to the best shape that our air defence will take. The last word in the shape of that home defence has not yet been said. I believe that this Bill will help to develop our defence plans more scientifically and also more economically. The Bill is quite simple in terms. It forges no new weapon, but merely sharpens an existing one. Above all, it provides no new facilities for offence. It is purely and solely defensive in its character, and it is, therefore, a menace to nobody. Until the nations agree otherwise, I see no escape from the duty of asking Parliament to provide for defence. Hon. Members opposite have shown me once or twice that I have a dislike for such a task. Because I have been somewhat
frank about it, they have also shown me that they fear that I may be seeking secretly to undermine the efficiency of the Air defence weapon. I want to tell them that those fears are groundless. What I dislike to have to do, every hon. Member of this House who thinks twice would also dislike having to do. The whole business of defence is a wicked waste of national substance. It is forced upon the world by the disease of international fear. I hope that some day that disease of international fear may be eradicated. It may be the heritage of the League of Nations to destroy that disease and bring about an era of sanity for all people, and I move the Second Reading of the Bill.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir SAMUEL HOARE: The Under-Secretary of State for Air has asked the House to place no obstacle in the passage of this Measure. So far as the Members on this side of the House are concerned, they are most anxious to see it placed on the Statute Book at the earliest possible moment. Indeed, what other action could we advise the House to take? So far as I can see, this Bill is word for word the same Bill that was drafted when we were in office, the same Bill that we included in the King's Speech, and the same Bill that, had we remained in office, we should have placed upon the Statute Book with the least possible delay. It is even more than that, for the Bill that was drafted when I was Secretary of State for Air was in many respects founded upon proposals that I found already in existence and that had their origin when the right hon. Member for the Stroud Division (Captain F. Guest) was my predecessor. The House, therefore, will observe that the original idea of the Bill was formed by a Liberal Secretary of State for Air, it was developed by a Conservative Secretary of State for Air, and it is now being proposed to the House by the hon. Gentleman opposite, representing the Labour Government. In view of those facts, I suggest that no party issues need cross the discussions that take place this afternoon, or when the Bill goes to Committee.
When the late Government were in office we had, as the House will remember, a very long inquiry made by the Committee of Imperial Defence into the whole question of air defence. During that inquiry two or three features special
to air defence impressed themselves on members of the Committee and induced the Government of the day to make the proposals that it outlined a year ago. First of all, there was the basic fact that what was wanted was a force of home defence and not a force to go overseas. In that respect, the problem was somewhat different from the military problem of the Territorials, who, it might be supposed, would in the ordinary course go overseas as any war developed. Indeed, that was what actually happened in the last war. In this case, it is difficult to contemplate a situation even after the outbreak of war in which we should desire that the home defence force against air attack should be removed overseas. It is obvious that, as long as there is an air menace, an adequate defence force will have to remain in this country to defend the capital of the Empire, the great munition works, and the whole life of the country from any possible air attack. That fact somewhat differentiated the problem of air defence from the problem either of sea or of ground defence. That being so, it is obvious that if we are to build up a force for home defence it is our duty to build it up upon a home defence basis and not to be drawn into equipping it with transport and other services of that kind that would only be required if the units were in the ordinary course of events transferred overseas. That was the first feature that led us to adopt the proposals in the Bill.
There was another factor in the problem. There was the question of economy. Obviously, any Government, when it is embarking on a scheme of expansion, particularly of military expansion, must make every attempt to keep the expenditure as low as possible. On that account we were anxious to introduce, so far as was safe, non-regular units in the scheme of home defence, for the obvious reason that units of that kind would, from the point of view of national expenditure, be much cheaper than fully established regular units. In the third place, and this is a side of the question that cannot be exaggerated, there was the great need, in the scheme of home defence, somehow or other to broaden the basis of air defence—to develop it from what it is now, a small professional force, into something larger than that, to
extend its roots and make the knowledge of air defence more general, and, if possible, to extend the interest in air defence and the knowledge of air problems on the same kind of lines on which the knowledge of military defence problems was extended in earlier days by the formation of the Territorial Force.
These three principal factors in the problem convinced us, and, I am glad to think, have convinced the present Government, that in the scheme of air defence within these shores it is vital to include proposals for starting a certain number of non-regular units upon the lines suggested in this Bill. I can conceive only one objection being made to these proposals. I can conceive its being said that, in a highly technical service like the Air Service, nothing in the nature of an amateur or non-regular service is of sufficient value to justify its inclusion in a scheme of air defence. I freely admit that I do not myself believe, however greatly these proposals may succeed, however keen may be the service that is put into these non-regular squadrons by the men and officers who join them, that we can ever reach a point when, in the Air Service, non-regular units will be able to achieve the same efficiency as regular units. I think that that must be obvious to any hon. Member who has studied the highly technical nature of air problems. But, in spite of that fact, I venture to say that it is wise to make this experiment.
It is an experiment which, after all, is only being made upon a comparatively small scale. The home defence force, when it is completed so far as its first stage is concerned, will consist of 52 squadrons, and it is now proposed that, of those 52 squadrons, 13 should be upon a non-regular basis. I am inclined to think that, in making this modest proposal to include only a quarter of the squadrons upon a non-regular basis, we are not taking any undue risk. The scheme, as the Under-Secretary has said, is experimental. It may be that it will not succeed as well as we hope it will. If that be so, the experiment is upon so modest a scale that I cannot see that it need, even if it fails, endanger the general efficiency of our home defence force. It may be that, as the experiment progresses, the proposals will have to be modified in one direction or another, and I am sure the Under-Secretary will agree with me when
I say that, in a Service in a state of great development, a comparatively new Service, like the Air Service, it is most important to keep a scheme of this kind as elastic as possible.
I suggest, therefore, to the House, that it is wise to propose that there should be two kinds of non-regular squadrons—the one the auxiliary squadron, somewhat on the basis of a Territorial unit, a unit fully established with non-regular officers and men, and with merely the adjutant and one or two regular non-commissioned officers that Territorial units possess. That is a unit that may well appeal to many men in this country who are interested in air defence. In the same way, there may be others who prefer the somewhat more military, the more regular, character of the special reserve unit—a unit in which one squadron will be entirely regular, and he other two squadrons will be kept up on a cadre basis. It is wise to have those two proposals, giving an alternative choice to men and officers who wish to join. It may well be, as I have said, that as the scheme develops other proposals upon these lines may also be necessary, and that one or other of these kinds of units may develop better, so that it may, therefore, be better to develop the one more quickly than the other. In any case, the experiment is on a modest scale, and on that account I urge upon any hon. Members who are in doubt as to whether it is wise to include the non-regular element, in the scheme for home defence, that the proposal is so restricted that, in my view, even if it fails, it will not endanger the success of the scheme.
If, however, it succeeds, let the House think of the great advantage that will be gained, not only by air defence in this country, but by British aviation generally. It has always seemed to me, and I cannot help thinking that the Under-Secretary will agree with me, that the great problem in air defence, and, perhaps, still more important in the field of British aviation generally, is to get the knowledge of the air much more extended than it has been before, so that, instead of having, as I said just now, a comparatively few highly expert officers and highly trained men, with almost a monopoly of air knowledge, and almost a monopoly of flying experience, you should have, over the whole country, and particularly in our great industrial
centres, a knowledge of flying, a knowledge of the parts of the aeroplanes—a very technical and complicated subject—a knowledge of the main outline, at any rate, of what I have always thought is the most urgent part of our national defence at the present moment.
I am inclined to think that the formation of these non-regular squadrons, particularly in our great industrial centres—and it is there that we look for their formation—will help to diffuse this knowledge of the air and its problems in a very remarkable manner, particularly if it is supplemented in a number of other directions, such, for instance, as the encouragement of light aeroplane flying clubs, in which I was always very much interested when I was at the Air Ministry and which, I am glad to see, the present Government appear to have every intention of developing. Another direction in which the spread of this knowledge of the air might be encouraged is by giving prizes, and there are a number of other ways of that kind. I regard the proposal that is being made to-day as, perhaps, the most important of these very necessary proposals for developing air knowledge and widening the basis of British aviation generally; but, as I have said, it should be supplemented in these other directions to which I have ventured to make a passing allusion.
I hope I have said enough to show that these 13 squadrons, which it is proposed under this Bill to form, are much more, from the, point of view of aviation, than a few experimental units. I believe they are going to be the basis of a great citizen national Air Force. I believe they are going to succeed, and that their success is going to mean a great widening of the whole basis of national defence, and a great extension generally of air knowledge and air experience. On that account, although the Bill is as I hope, a non-controversial Bill, and although, as I hope, it will pass quickly, it is none the less, in the view of hon. Members on this side of the House, a very important Measure—important, as I have said, from the general point of view of British aviation, and important, also, from the very urgent point of view of air defence against possible air attack. It is an important step in the formation of a home defence Air Force, and I am glad to think that the air units for home
defence are, in a short time, to be placed under a single command. Hitherto, there has been no separate command for home defence against air attack. These unite, unless the Government change the policy upon which we agreed last year, will form an integral part of this single, unified air command within these shores. The formation of this single command is, I believe, a very important step in the development of our home defence. It will mean that all the various measures of home defence, the non-regular units included in this Bill, the regular units that are already being formed, the antiaircraft units, for the drafts, will all be under the direction and control of the central air officer. That does not mean that the Air Ministry will have to administer the anti-aircraft ground units—

Mr. SPEAKER: I am afraid that I must interrupt the right hon. Gentleman. The point he is now developing is one for the Air Estimates, and not for this Bill.

Sir S. HOARE: I am sorry that my enthusiasm carried me further than I should have gone, Perhaps I shall be in order if I emphasise the point that I desire to emphasise, that these units form a part of the home defence force, and I am glad to think that they will be under a central command with the regular units. I hope I have said enough to commend the proposals of the Bill to hon. Members behind me. Perhaps I might also commend the proposals to the Territorial Associations outside, who, under the Bill, will have to administer the non-regular units. We had a number of consultations with representatives of the associations last year, and it was then a matter of satisfaction to everyone concerned how anxious they all seemed to be to make the scheme a success. There is no question at present of having non-regular units in every county. It will be a question of selecting five or six suitable centres and basing upon these centres a strictly limited number of non-regular squadrons. Wherever the squadrons are formed, it seemed to me that there was, quite obviously, full willingness on the part of the associations concerned to try to make them a success. As far as the Special Reserve squadrons are concerned, may I take this opportunity of pressing upon the Under-Secretary of State for Air
the extreme urgency of getting some of the Special Reserve squadrons formed with the least possible delay? I remember, as a member of the London Territorial Association, and as a London Member of Parliament, how anxious the City and the County of London were to form two London Special Reserve squadrons. I hope, therefore, that as soon as the Bill is passed, the Government will proceed with the proposals, and that we shall have two London Special Reserve squadrons formed before the end of the year.
I do not think I need say anything more about the Bill, beyond expressing the hope that, while there will be points upon which hon. Members will want further information, the Bill as a whole will proceed without any opposition, and that at the earliest possible moment we shall see not only the Bill upon the Statute Book, but these squadrons, the Auxiliary and the Special Reserve, actually formed.

Captain WEDGWOOD BENN: In this matter the Government have been forced by circumstances to follow the lines of their predecessors. The Under-Secretary has frankly admitted that. Whatever may be their aspirations, as regards their practical programme they have been compelled to take exactly the same steps as would have been taken by my right hon. and gallant Friend who has just spoken, or by any other Air Minister. That is the first point that was clear from the Under-Secretary's speech. When it is said that the men who enlist in these Auxiliary and Reserve forces are not for service overseas, the word does not imply restfulness or safety in the sense that no overseas service might conceivably be interpreted as regards a Volunteer or a Territorial. These men will have work to do quite as arduous or dangerous, perhaps even more dangerous, as men who are so fortunate as to be sent to distant parts where, if there be a war, it would not possibly be of such an extremely acute kind as it might be here.
The purpose of the scheme is to popularise a knowledge and love of flying amongst the people of this country. No one is better qualified to advocate that than my right hon. and gallant Friend who has just spoken, because by his personal example as Air Minister he did a great deal to make people accustomed to
the idea of going from place to place by air. It is a very important feature of the scheme that in various industrial centres we shall have squadrons, not of professional soldiers or airmen but of civilians, who will have an opportunity of coming into practical touch with the problem of flying. The low-power aeroplanes, the glider and slow-landing machine all make flying easier and cheaper, and if these squadrons result in the setting up of little circles of enthusiasts in various parts of the country, they will have done a great deal, apart from their important military value, towards doing what we all desire, namely, to implant an air sense in our people. If we were saved in the past by having a sea sense, it is necessary that we should develop an air sense if we are to be saved in the future.
That brings me to my one criticism or inquiry in regard to the Bill. These county associations were formed, of course, for the purpose of soldiering. They consist of people who are used to soldiers and military ideas. There is nothing that is so important and vital as to apprehend that the Air Force is not an army and is not a navy. It is a different thing altogether; it has a different outlook and a different mentality, and if you are going to hand over the development of this infant, on which such hopes are set, wholly to people whose experience is of marching and countermarching, camps and tents, you will not be doing the right thing.

Earl WINTERTON: The hon. and gallant Member is wrong in supposing that the Members of the County Associations, or even the majority of the members, are members of the Territorial Force. They consist of citizens of all classes.

Captain BENN: I would not for worlds be supposed to be criticising the Territorial Associations in the exercise of their functions. I know very little about them, but everything leads one to assume that they have done their work very well. It is, however, no good putting an Auxiliary Air Force into the hands of people whose minds are concerned with military things, because the Air Force is something quite different from the Army. For instance, the General thinks that you must put all your tents in a row. That is what a hostile airman would like, because if he
misses the first tent he will get the other tents when he throws his next bomb. I mention that in order to show that the two conceptions, that of the Army and that of the Air Force, differ. I assume that the Under-Secretary, when he replies, will assure me that for the purpose of this Bill he intends to reinforce the County Associations and, if necessary, to form separate associations of people who have the air idea—people who are technicians, and who are more concerned with science and research than with the goose-step and things of that kind. If the Under-Secretary, as no doubt he will, in nominating members of the County or Joint Associations, will bear this point of view in mind, he may succeed, and I hope he will succeed, in forming in different districts a nucleus of people who are enthusiasts for a force which in time, whatever the length of service of the others may be, will be the premier force of the country.

Captain BRASS: I was very interested to hear the speech of my hon. and gallant Friend who has just sat down, with most of which I entirely agree, but I think he stretched the point, so far as the Army was concerned, rather too far in suggesting that the Army is going to dominate in some way the Air Force in the county associations. If he looks at the Bill he will see that two county associations can be formed if need be. There can be a Joint County Association or two separate associations, an Army association and an Air Force association. Therefore, he need have no fear that the Army is going to dominate the Air Force any more than the Navy is going to dominate the Air Force.
The speech of the Under-Secretary for Air, with his customary essay on pacifism, was extremely interesting; but I do not agree with what he says when he made the remark that the weapon was going to be sharpened. When you are going to substitute a non-regular service of 13 squadrons for what might have been a regular service of 13 squadrons, I cannot see how you are going to sharpen the force. I should have thought that it would have been the reverse, and that you would have blunted the weapon I do not oppose the Bill, because we are all in agreement with the principle of it. As far as I can see, the principle of the Bill, is that we should form a Territorial Air
Force, and alter the enlistment of the Air Force Reserve so that a man entering the Air Force Reserve can be a man previously regularly employed in the Air Force. That is a very laudable object. We want to try to imbue, if we can, the air spirit into the people of this country. We want to try to make them learn the air sense, and we also want to identify air defence with the national life of the country.
We also desire, so I gather from the speech of the Under-Secretary, to effect a certain amount of saving in what we are doing and to tap, if we can, the amateur engineering skill of the people of this country. That, in itself, is very laudable, but I want to examine a little more closely what is going to happen if we do this. Let us take the Auxiliary Air Force, to start with. I do not want to speak so much about the Reserve. It is suggested that it could be run in the same way as the Territorial Army. Therefore, you would have areas for recruiting exactly in the same way as you have areas for recruiting under the ordinary Territorial scheme. But examine what would happen. Take the Sussex area, for example. You might have Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings, Chichester, Arundel, Bognor and Littlehampton. In all these places, in the case of the Territorial Force, you would have platoons, if there were infantry, under the officers who lived in the particular area. If there were yeomanry, you would have a troop and in the bigger towns you would have troop headquarters. How are you going to do that in the case of the Air Force? How are you going to arrange for recruits to be taught anything of the slightest value in Arundel or Chichester or Littlehampton?
You can do that if you are merely going to drill them, as you would drill infantry men or cavalry men, but how can you do it if you want to teach them something which is purely technical? The people whom you are going to recruit are people who are going to be able to rig aeroplanes, overhaul engines and fly. How can you teach individuals air mechanics at Chichester how to rig an aeroplane or overhaul an engine? How can you teach a man at Chichester, assuming that he belongs to the Sussex part of the scheme, how to fly? For the work of rigging aero-
planes and overhauling engines you must have workshops and the people to teach those persons how to do the work. I happened to be in the yeomanry in the Territorial Army, and we used to collect our men and have a troop drill, and in the infantry they drilled them at infantry drill, etc., but I do not see how you can apply that to a service which is so technical as the Air Force is.
Assuming that it would be possible to do it—and I have great doubt about it—that is not the whole of the problem. One of the great difficulties is how to teach these people to fly. I understand that, as far as this Territorial scheme is concerned, the county is going to be a unit just as in case of the infantry or the Yeomanry, and therefore you are going to have a Sussex or a Lancashire or a Kent Flying squadron as the unit, which has in it flying officers, air mechanics, and so on. How can the individual people in that unit learn to fly? They will have to go away somewhere, possibly to some place like Croydon. Are the officers going to learn to fly in the units when they go away for a fortnight in the summer, or are they to learn to fly with the general units in the Flying Corps? When I learned to fly it took me a long time, and it does take a long time in this country. The weather conditions are against learning. You might go into a camp, like a Territorial camp, for a fortnight in the middle of summer, and you might say, "I am going to learn to fly in that fortnight," but you might easily find in that fortnight not a single day on which a machine could rise from the ground. How are you going to teach people to fly in that way? Is it not very much better to have a reserve and teach people to fly in a general flying place, and not to try to arrange a technical service on the same lines as those which suit a non-technical service like the Yeomanry?
In view of the increase in aerodromes which will be necessary in order to carry out the scheme, I would like to know if the Under-Secretary has got in view the aerodromes which are necessary for the County Associations? Then a word as to the machines. As the hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain Benn) has said, it is a very dangerous thing to learn to fly, and I want to be convinced that these Territorial airmen are going to be given new machines and not merely to be given the old machines that have been
thrown away from the regular force. That is a very important point. If you are going to have a Territorial Air Force, and it is going to lead to a large number of fatal accidents in this country, the result will be exactly the reverse of what is desired. Then if you have amateur air mechanics, teaching in various towns like Chichester or Brighton how to rig aeroplanes and overhaul engines, are you going to ask officers to go up and risk their lives in aeroplanes rigged by amateur engineers?
On the question of home, service, as I read the Bill it means that if an officer or an air mechanic, a pilot, goes up in this country and lands back in this country or within its territorial waters that is to be considered as home service. If an officer orders a pilot to go from London, say, to Paris and come back here, will that be considered as flying on home service? Will a man on home service be allowed in that way to fly somewhat outside the home area? I am not saying that that is wrong. I merely want information on the point. Personally I would say, as far as home service is concerned, that it is essential for the Air Force, if they are going to send officers to fly, to be able to send them abroad, because the only defence against air attack, as far as one can see, is to go and attack somebody else. It is no good saying that you will wait until aeroplanes come over London and then send out machines to attack. The only way to prevent people attacking us is to go and attack them. If the Clause provides, as I read it, that a man can go up in a machine in this country, fly to France and come back again and still be considered on home service, I have no objection, but I want to know if that be so.
I have two fears as far as this Bill is concerned. One is a fear that we may get into a condition of false security in this country, that we may have a great deal of publicity as to having 13 extra squadrons, Territorial flying squadrons, to defend this country, and that those squadrons may not be in the least efficient. If so, that is a great danger to the defence of this country from the air. My second fear is that if you are going to have amateur mechanics rigging machines, overhauling engines, putting engines into them and starting engines, and so on, you are going to create a con-
dition in which it will be extremely dangerous for pilots to be forced to go up in them at all. Those are two points which I want the Under-Secretary for Air to consider very carefully. I do not want to oppose this Bill, but if this is, as he says, purely an experiment to see whether it works or does not work I want an assurance that if after a short period he finds that it is not developing properly, and that some of the suggestions which I have made are true, then 13 new regular squadrons will be substituted for those which are now proposed, so that the defence of this country in the air may be assured.

5.0 P.M.

Major BURNIE: The Under-Secretary has told us that this Bill forges no new weapon, but merely sharpens the existing weapon. The speeches which have followed have strengthened the conclusion to which I came when I read the Bill, that we are taking a great departure and, as some of us think, a great step forward. That is, we are going to place the air defence of this country by the citizens of the country in the position in which it should be placed. One Clause which I rather dislike in the Bill is that the officers and men are to be enrolled for service in the United Kingdom only. I am a man of peace. I do not believe in war. But I think the lesson we learnt at the beginning of the last war was that the men who are ready to defend this country must be prepared to leave this country, and it is a mistake to enlist them in time of peace and then, when war breaks out, to say to them, "We want you to go abroad." The conditions should be made clear to them when we enrol them in the service. We may as well face the facts now as later on. I rather differ from my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Leith (Captain Benn) with regard to the County Associations. The County Associations are not military bodies at all. They are members of town and city councils who are prepared to assist, as honourable citizens of the country, with the equipment of the citizen forces, and they are merely assisted by military advisers, and, to my mind, the powers taken in this Bill for constructing separate associations would not work very well. One association is perfectly well equipped to carry out the work in each county. The work consists of finding the clothing, the
buildings, the ground for the aerodromes, and so on, which is perfectly competent for a civilian body to do assisted by military or Air Force officers, and I think for the defence of the country a closer co-ordination between the Air Force and the military forces of the country is better for the defence of the country. The more the work can be entrusted to civilian bodies in securing uniforms and ground for aerodromes, the better for the country.
The other matter I should like to refer to is this. I feel diffident at intervening, not being an airman, but sometimes in these matters the voice of one who sees from the outside brings ideas which the experts do not see because they view it from the position of an expert. Before the War the practice was prevalent of arming and equipping our auxiliary forces with what can only be described as cast off from the Regular forces. The rifle that the infantry had was the old pattern rifle which was not fit for modern warfare. The machine gun they had was the Maxim, compared with the Vickers. The artillery were armed with obsolete weapons and we expected those men, whom we had enlisted for home service only, whom we trained with obsolete weapons, to proceed against Continental armies armed with the latest and most modern weapons. If we are going to enlist our citizens into a citizen Air Force, although the Under-Secretary the other day used the phrase
preparation for war was a wicked waste of national substance.
I should be prepared to waste money rather than to waste life, and if we are going to send those men to fight against an air force equipped with the most modern aeroplanes and the most modern machinery of all kinds, we should vote the money readily to equip them with the most modern instruments of warfare. They risk their lives and it is only fair that we should risk the money to see that they are equipped and the lesson of the last war, which has sunk deep in many of our hearts when we think how the men had to go with this bad equipment, should not be forgotten.

Sir GEOFFREY BUTLER: Like several other speakers, I want to begin with a word of congratulation and to end with some questions. I think, on the whole, one can congratulate the Under-Secretary
on the slightly more martial note that is creeping into his speeches. With the permission of my Noble Friend the Member for South Battersea (Viscount Curzon), I think and feel that we may perhaps hope that, like the chief character in "Paradise Lost," having once fallen from grace, he will take to what was a distinctly uncongenial job with increasing gusto. Secondly, this Measure is one that I have spent a little time in studying in connection with the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act, legislation which is associated with the name of the present Lord Chancellor. It is extraordinarily interesting to see with how much sureness of touch the permanent officials and those responsible to the nation for handling these services are able, in the light of experience since 1907, to improve the law and to show a very lack of simplicity, which seems to me an entirely good thing about this Measure, a new and highly desirable feature. But, in casting up the impression one gathers of that great Measure of 1907 and the impression one forms on reading the Bill we have before us, one notices that at any rate in the experimental stage—it may not be more—there is a concentration of effort which was absent in the former and more elaborate effort. You see that we are starting practically only in those centres which the Lord Chancellor referred to as "the large towns where work is performed which bears very closely upon the construction of aeroplanes and the provision of material for the Air Force." So far so good, and the reasons for that are obvious. But besides the mere geographical centres there are surely what one might call propagandist centres, and in the light of what has been said by the right hon. Gentleman opposite and others to the necessity of spreading an air sense throughout the country, it seems to me that here is a point of view which ought not to be overlooked.
I wish to put in a plea for the universities as centres in which you may be able to plant the beginnings of an air sprit and inaugurate a work which will inevitably spread throughout the country. You have there a constant flow through of men who will take up work—engineering work very often—in all parts of the country, and in connection with more than one of the bigger universities you have, of course, aerodromes close at hand. I do not pretend at this moment
to suggest how the touch between the Auxiliary Air Force and the university centres can best be inaugurated or maintained, and I understand it is already to some extent engaging the attention of the Air Ministry. But I think there is probably, more now than ever before, a chance of really fruitful action in that direction, and for this reason, that you have got, rightly or wrongly, the younger generation less enthusiastic on joining the Officers Training Corps than they were before the War. It is more difficult to get them to join, and for two reasons. In the first place, I think there has been a great overdoing of the Officers Training Corps work at the schools, particularly the less interesting branches of it, and they come up, to some extent, fatigued in mind, and secondly, a great many people saw when the last War broke out that it was no advantage to them in getting a commission to have been actually in an Officers Training Corps. The numbers enrolled are not entirely unsatisfactory, and the spirit of the place is as satisfactory as over. But what those responsible for working up enthusiasm in the Officers Training Corps say is that the more complicated branches of the Service—engineering, wireless, the medical section, gunnery, and so forth—are the branches which attract more than any others. Surely that is illuminating in any idea of setting up there work in connection with new auxiliary branches of the Air Force. Of course it would not be included in this Bill. In the Territorial and Reserve Force Act, 1907, Section 2, paragraph (f), authority is given to undertake negotiations with the authorities of cadet corps and the like throughout the country. The only other point I wish to raise is as to the suitability of these local Territorial associations for taking on the work. Surely it is not necessary to take either extreme view, because I understand from the speech with which the Debate opened that it is the intention to incorporate into the Territorial Association those who are in touch with air ideas and air thought, but upon that point one would like very much to be reassured by the hon. Gentleman.

Lieut.-Colonel MOORE-BRABAZON: I rise to supplement one or two remarks which have been referred to by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Leith (Captain Benn), and the hon.
Gentleman who has just spoken with regard to the difficulty of getting the youth of the country interested in flying qua flying, not necessarily from the military point of view but flying in general. We have been a seafaring nation, largely due to geography, but also, there is little doubt, because to go upon the sea and to sail a boat is the heart's desire of every boy. Although this Bill invents machinery to get people into the Auxiliary Air Force I do not think—and I believe the Under-Secretary will agree with me—that you really make an appeal to the youth of the country to take up a thing like flying by trying to make him become a soldier. If that is right I think some other form of encouragement should be given to the youth of the country that he may face the joys of getting into the air, because I feel that the associations are going to have great difficulty in getting men to go into the Auxiliary Air Force. The only large section of people I can imagine who would take it up are the members of the Universities, especially Cambridge, who have shown enormous interest in aviation in general. I maintain that we have in this country plenty of good material, plenty of men who want to fly. You can see most of them riding motor cycles at a hideous speed every Saturday and Sunday, generally with a girl on the back of the motor cycle. That, of course, is a much more dangerous pastime than any flying. What the Under-Secretary has to do is to get that man off his motor bicycle and on to an aeroplane, and to let him have the same super-cargo tucked in behind.
I have had a good deal of experience of running an aeroplane as a hobby, and I only wish that I had all the money that I have spent upon that particular hobby, because it is a very expensive thing to do, and I do not think that to-day you can get many people to do it. But just as things have changed in aeroplane organisation in this country, so there has come over aeronautics a very great change from the point of view of machines. It will be within the recollection of the House that the Aero Club, which is responsible for the flying side, organised two years ago a competition for gliders. They are a very inexpensive form of machine. The competition was a great success; one man stayed up three hours without any engine. The natural
development of that was to fit a small glider with an engine more or less of motor-cycle type. Many Members, who take an interest in these things, will remember the trial that took place last year at Lympne. I maintain that if encouragement is given to flying, qua flying, by the young men of England, there would be a demand for that type of machine, which can be bought at a price varying from £100 to £250. If you are to get the youth of this country air loving instead of sea loving, you must encourage as much as possible the sporting side of flying by seeing that that type of flying, with the light and cheap machine, is popularised in every way.
This country does not recognise as some foreign countries do bodies such as the Aero Club as being of public utility, and does not give them particular advantages. The Government cannot run a small competition, cannot organise clubs which own their own gliders and small machines. The Government cannot do that, but they can help very much another body in organising such forms of competition and in popularising flying as it should be popularised. I have been on many deputations to the Air Ministry in order to get that sort of help, with a view of getting the youth of this country up into the air, and I must say that, although we have always received courtesy, I have found the Air Ministry exceedingly sticky. I think that that word describes their attitude. I hope that the Under-Secretary will assure us to-day that he intends to give that part of the subject a little more sympathetic consideration. I believe that the youth of this country would make the finest flyers in the world. But how is the young man to approach the subject at all? Under the Government scheme he has to become a soldier. I do not think he wants to become a soldier always. He wants, first of all, to have a taste of it, and afterwards he will get enthusiastic. To give him a taste of it you have first of all to awaken his interest in the sporting side of the matter. If the Air Ministry will encourage throughout the country, under the direction of a body like the Aero Club, local clubs which organise gliding competitions and own small-power machines, there would be started in that way a love
of flying which would react finally on the military machines for which this Bill is brought before the House.

Captain BERKELEY: I am sure that the House will agree with the last speaker as to the great desirability of creating this air sense among the young men of the country. The sea sense has, of course, been created by the fact that we are a maritime nation, and because, from childhood upwards, so many of our population actually live on the sea or are accustomed to going upon the sea. I confess that I find soma difficulty in seeing exactly how this air spirit is to be encouraged, except by some such stimulus as the holding of competitions. I see no reason why competitions should not be held under the auspices of the Government by encouraging civilian undertakings of the kind referred to, and by the giving of prizes, not large, for skill in the air. That may seem a somewhat material point of view from which to approach the subject, but the really essential thing is to get young men interested in the air and willing to run the risks necessary to learn flying by going up fairly continually. It was not for that purpose that I rose, but rather to ask the Under-Secretary to make clear exactly what is meant in various parts of the Bill where the words used are:
liable to be called up for service within the British Islands.
It looks to me rather as if there had been a little carelessness in drafting. I have no doubt that in preparing the Bill the Under-Secretary and his officers have been governed by the ordinary form in which similar Bills providing for the calling up of military reserves have been worded. How can yon lay it down that a man who is going to join the Air Reserve for the purpose of defence, in case of an actually apprehended attack, is only to be called up for service within the British Islands? It may be necessary for you to send your defending squadrons—I speak subject to correction by experts—some distance beyond these islands in order to meet attack. Is what is behind the Bill this—that they are to be called up only for defensive, purposes, not to be called up to go into the air until there has been given notice to the Air Ministry of a hostile fleetapproaching these islands, or are they to be liable to be called
up to take part in preliminary operations which could quite correctly be described as defensive operations—preliminary operations before a hostile fleet has left the shores of an enemy country—for the purpose of warding off a possible attack? I hope that my hon. Friend, in replying, will make quite plain what is to be understood by the words I have quoted. In Clause 3 the words are even more specific. They are:
to provide for the enlistment of men into the Air Force Reserve as special reservists with a liability to serve within the limits of the British Islands only.

Captain Viscount CURZON: I am glad to be able to take part in the Debate, having listened to all the speeches made so far. The Under-Secretary said that this Bill was accepted for the time being by the Government. I do not know what he meant by "for the time being by the Government."

Mr. LEACH: Not in connection with the Bill.

Viscount CURZON: I do not know in what connection the hon. Member used the words.

Mr. LEACH: I used them in connection with the scheme of home defence.

Viscount CURZON: That seems to be a distinction without a difference. But let it pass. The hon. Gentleman went on to point out that the fears of hon. Members on this side, with regard to his well-known principles in the matter of national defence, were perfectly groundless, and that we need not fear anything at all. But almost in the same breath he said that defence was a wicked waste, of national substance. On that I would like to cross swords with him. I cannot understand the hon. Gentleman's idea of defence. I look upon defence as the expression of the right of a nation to live, to be able to live. I say also that the greatest pacifist in the world is a pacifist only because he believes in peace. If you really believe in peace, surely you want to be able to ensure that you will have peace? I can imagine the hon. Gentleman going to someone who may annoy him and asking him not to do so. That may work in the case of individuals, especially in the case of those who have the hon. Member's special
methods of pleading, but it will not work in matters of State.
The hon. Gentleman gave us a certain amount of explanation of the Bill, but he did not say whether there was any extra cost to be placed on the State. We have no idea as to what this scheme is likely to cost, and that is a very material point. I would like to have relative figures, if they are known, as between a reserve squadron and a squadron on an active service basis. Then there is the question of efficiency. I suppose that this scheme has been modelled, partly upon the scheme of the Admiralty with regard to naval reserves, and partly upon the scheme of the Territorial Army. With regard to the training to be given to the Auxiliary Air Force and the Air Force Reserve under this scheme, when units are called up for training is it intended to call out an entire squadron or to call the men out as individuals and to draft them ino active service squadrons to serve their time? That is the system which is adopted in the case of the Naval Reserves. There men are drafted to sea as and when they are able to go. That is a very important point in dealing with auxiliary forces, because you cannot order men all into camp or all to undergo training at the same time. If you are able to study their convenience a little and so to arrange things that, when they get their holidays, they can do their training, you are much more likely to get all the men to do the training with the minimum of difficulty. Can we have some idea as to what is intended with regard to training?
One or two Members, notably the hon. and gallant Member for Bootle (Major Burnie), raised a point which is absolutely vital to the success of the whole scheme. That is the question of what sort of training the men are to undergo. What sort of equipment are they to have? When you send these fellows out for training, if you are to form these squadrons, are they to be given their own machines or are they to be expected to go away just as individuals and to descend upon some active service squadrons and to use its machines? The point ought to be made clear. If they are to be drafted to active service squadrons, it is important that they should be able to train upon the most modern type of machine which they can be given. That raises a very
important point, not only as regards the training of the Auxiliary Air Force and the Air Force Reserve, but as regards the Air Force itself. A great many of us are very anxious indeed with regard to the equipment of the Air Force itself. We have not got in this country, in any service squadron, a single machine which could catch the machine used by that very gallant Frenchman who is engaged in a round-the-world flight. We have not got a single fighter which could catch him. Our fastest fighting machine on service could not catch the fastest two-seater in any foreign country in the world. People do not realise these facts. The particulars are not given, but what I have stated is perfectly true, and I can substantiate my statement with details of the actual speeds realised.
All these questions are of the greatest possible importance, and we desire to know upon what basis these men are to be called up and what sort of equipment they are going to have. A great deal has been said as to getting students of the universities to go into training, and I am entirely in favour of that view. I want to see our air service grow up in the same way as our sea service, and it is probably vital for us that it should do so. But one point arises. If a young man goes in for the Air Force Reserve, and is in an ordinary occupation in civil life, how will he stand with regard to life insurance? Take the case of young men employed in banks. I understand that in some banks, if not in all, the clerks have to insure their lives, and the policies are held by the banks. Will any difficulty be placed in the way of this scheme by employers, and, if so, what attitude is the Government going to take? The question of life insurance enters very largely into civil life, and it is obvious that, in the popular mind at any rate, flying is regarded as a dangerous pastime, though I am not quite sure as to the relative amount of risk, comparing flying with other pursuits. At any rate, I think it would be generally accepted that flying is somewhat dangerous, and the question of life insurance is likely to be one of considerable importance, and might easily have a considerable effect upon recruiting under this scheme.
I hope we may have answers to these questions, particularly with regard to the question of cost. It is only when we
know all the particulars that we shall be able to say whether this Bill is going to be worth while or not. Personally, I would rather see the Government going straight out for a scheme which would ensure us the necessary number of active service squadrons. I have grave doubts as to whether, under this scheme, you will be able to get squadrons worth anything at all, up to the required pitch of efficiency to enable them to take their place in a well co-ordinated scheme of national defence. I have seen it advocated that men should be allowed to serve in the force, and not wear uniforms, and it is suggested that in that way you might get more recruits from the engineering shops and from the working class in the great centres of population. I do not know whether it is intended to make that provision in the scheme or not, but I submit we should be given a little more information on all these points.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir JOSEPH NALL: I do not wish to be regarded by any means as an enthusiastic supporter of the Bill. As my noble Friend has just pointed out, it does not go far enough to meet the needs of the situation. As far as it does go, in establishing an auxiliary Air Force, and a reserve Air Force, I am rather inclined to believe that its possibilities may be over-estimated by its authors and a false sense of security or over-confidence may be engendered in the public mind, which in a few years' time we shall have reason to regret. It is necessary, when we consider the possibility of raising an Air Force on what is regarded as a Territorial basis or a system similar to that of the present Territorial Army, that we should visualise the conditions of training under which the Territorials are trained. The few evening drills in the year, the two or three week-end trainings and the 15 days in an annual camp, where the weather may be good, or may be extremely bad, provide all too few opportunities for attempting to make soldiers. But even so, nobody expects the Territorial soldier to take the field without some further intensive training if war breaks out. With an airman it is altogether different. I do not see how a pilot who is to be ready for immediate defensive purposes when war breaks out is going to be trained under any system similar to the Territorial system, and I do
not see how financial provision can be made economically for training them on that basis.
In the case of the Naval Volunteer Reserve, obviously it would be quite absurd to apply the Territorial system of training. You could not have a battleship or a number of destroyers manned by Territorial sailors at Brighton or Blackpool. The Volunteer Reserve of the Navy consists, and must consist, of a number of auxiliary men who train with the regular force, and augment the regular force in times of crisis. If efficiency with economy is to be attained in providing this Air Force Auxiliary, a similar system will have to be adopted either in whole or in part. The question of the county associations, for which provision is made in this Bill, also requires consideration. An hon. and gallant Gentleman who spoke previously was under some misapprehension in thinking that the Territorial Association to-day is a military organisation. The Territorial county associations are solely concerned with administration, and the present associations should be able to administer those services or branches of administration which it is their lot to undertake, as well for the Air Force as for the Territorial Army The provision of headquarters, land, buildings, clothing, equipment, the stimulation of recruiting—all these matters of administration are very similar, whether they relate to the Air Force or to the Territorial Army. To set up throughout the country, a separate and additional system of county associations, with the necessary offices and secretaries, apart altogether from keeping the necessary civilian personnel in the different areas, seems to be needless expense and to be creating overlapping.
I hope when the existing county associations are approached—as I suppose they will be in the first instance by the Air Ministry before any effort to raise separate associations is undertaken—they will regard the question from a broad-minded point of view. I understand that when lately, in pursuance of their present functions, they were asked to undertake the provision of supplementary reserves for the Regular Army, some county associations, in the backwoods of England and Wales, thought the Regular Army was quite outside the functions of the Territorial Association.
If that spirit is to be manifested towards a new Air Force Reserve, obviously, the Ministry will have an excuse for setting up a separate system of associations. I hope, in case that should be necessary, that as few separate associations as possible will be created. One of the outstanding features of the present county association system is, that there are far too many separate associations. I believe in one case a county association administers less than an infantry company. The county boundary does not give the proper kind of zone for associations of this kind; nor is the county boundary the right kind of area for the allocation of personnel up and down the country.
In evolving establishments for this new scheme, I hope regard will be had to existing facilities in the country and that, the Ministry will not embark upon vast expenditure in new aerodromes and new quarters before every effort has been made to adapt existing property to their requirements. I believe these observations to be strictly relevant to the question of this Bill. I am not at all convinced that an Air Force on a Territorial basis is economically sound or that it will justify itself on an efficiency test. So far as this Bill goes, I urge upon the Government to apply it with a strict regard for economy, and to see that where it is necessary that new machines should be provided they should be handed over to new and untrained units. I urge them to see that the personnel, in the first instance, is trained with and by the existing regular squadrons. In that way alone can an efficient start be made It is true, as the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Chatham (Lieut. Colonel Moore-Brabazon) said just now, the raising of Air Force reserves on a military basis will not appeal to many young men who might be attracted to aviation as a sport.
I do not quite follow the suggestion that the Ministry can achieve its object through a sporting organisation or even through the Aero Club, because, after all, public money cannot very well be applied in any large amounts in subsidising private sport, and I think the experience of the civil aviation subsidy a few years ago ought to be sufficient proof that money spent in that way does not provide an efficient military organisation. I think that all those hundreds of
thousands of pounds that were spent under that old scheme produced something less than a score of pilots, who were not under any obligation to serve, and something under a score of aeroplanes, none of which could be adapted to military purposes. Do not let us repeat that kind of thing by granting public funds for the encouragement of private sport in aviation. I would rather that additional funds should be allotted for completing the equipment of the regular squadrons, that the number of squadrons retained at home should be increased, and that the personnel in those squadrons should be capable of training these new reservists in regular service aerodromes, and I am sure that by that means alone we shall best achieve the object aimed at by the Bill.

Mr. HARDIE: I want to approach this subject once more from the practical side. I was somewhat amused in the Debate this afternoon, when the hon. and gallant Member for Chatham (Lieut.-Colonel Moore-Brabazon), who last spoke from the Front Opposition Bench, tried to draw a relation between a motor bicycle and a flying machine. The man who tries to draw a relation between a motor bicycle and a young man who goes out on Saturday with someone sitting behind him, and transferring that energy in the idea of sport to a flying machine, has not thought out the question, or else is trying to take a rise out of the House, as we say in Glasgow. There is no relation between the motor bicycle or the motorcar and the flying machine, for this reason, that you can train a man to take a car about and to do small running repairs, and, when absolutely beaten, to push the machine to the roadside and leave it there, but you cannot expect a young man who can handle a motor bicycle for an afternoon and do email repairs and then, when beaten, can leave it at the roadside, and both of them come home together—and when I say "both," I do not mean the bicycle, but the charge behind him—to be capable of flying a machine. What is the use of trying to discuss this subject by giving an illustration that has absolutely no relation to it? There is no relation between anyone with experience in running an engine on terra firma and anyone experienced in going into the air.
Going into the air, you are in the position of the Irishman who was holding another Irishman by a rope. The man who was holding the rope said to Pat down below: "How are you?" The man down below replied: "Going on fine," and the man who was holding the rope called back: "Well, just hold on till I spit on my hands." A man may have running experience of his engine, but in the air, when anything serious goes wrong, he cannot take it into a side street; he must deal with it immediately.
My purpose in entering this discussion is to go back, as I always do, to the beginning, and that is to a thorough education. Whatever a man is going to do, he should know it from A to Z, and were I a dictator, what you would have to do in this country, if you wanted to go into the air, would be, first, to demonstrate that you knew every point about the engine in its construction, and, in addition, I should put before you all possible defects that can develop in the running of an engine, and, unless you could show to me that you could deal with every one of these likely things that could happen to the engine, you would not get it into the air. That is to say, you would require to be a first-class engineer before you would be allowed to drive that engine in the air. I saw a machine in the air yesterday, and I followed it on my bicycle for two miles. The man was in difficulties, and it was quite easy to see just exactly what happened. One of those little things took place of which the man had not been taught in this supposed school that you have, one of those little developments of which no one has any previous experience, and, of course, the man was caught. He was able to glide down on to terra firma, but he was caught.
Now, if we are going to have an Air Service, we must have it based upon absolute control, and you cannot control unless you have absolute knowledge of what you are to control. Take the suggestion of a Territorial Force; take some smart fellow who, after two or three Saturday afternoons, has been mounting with an engine and thinks he is now qualified to go into the air, and you ask some poor, innocent pilot to go up with him. The pilot with any brains, of course, will not go. It amused me tremendously to-day to hear the hon. and gallant Member for Chatham, who said that we wanted rather to get the sporting side
of this subject developed—that is to say, the sporting side of life-taking is to become something they want to develop. There is no sporting side to life-taking, and that is why I always oppose here the spending of any money or the giving of any facilities to anything in this line that is for taking life, but I will vote for any sum and give any facilities for the development of any science at all. I do not care what science it is. Some people may think that certain branches are useless, but I do not agree. There is no nation that can afford to ignore any branch of science, and I would be prepared to vote any money and give any facilities for the development of science, but not to specialise for the purpose of taking life, and that is just what has been put forward in this Debate.
The question of home and foreign service has been mentioned, but why do you not feel that you are able to deal with this question at once? A man rises, say, in this land, and he is on home service until he lands in a foreign country, and then he is on foreign service. If he comes back and lands here again, then he is again, on home service, and that seems to me to be an absolute solution of the whole problem that has been discussed for so long this afternoon. When you come to the question of the price of the machine, at £180 to £250, that would be handed our to people who want to kill a Saturday afternoon by flying instead of going out on a motor bicycle, what is the type of engine supplied in that machine? Would it be an engine in regard to which all running tests had been applied, and with a guarantee that, provided the "juice" was getting right to the spot, the engine would continue running for a certain number of hours? You would have no such guarantee as that, because the machine that would be put out at £250 maximum would not have a reliable engine. It could not be produced at that price, or, if you produced the engine, you would have to cut the branches of the trees to make up the aeroplane wings, because you could not supply both the engines and the flying parts for £250—nothing reliable. You could get a sort of Woolworth type of thing, but not a reliable type of thing. If you want to increase your death-rate, this is how to do it, on Saturday afternoons, at £250, and cheap at the price. If there had been anything serious to-day in the arguments from the
Front Opposition Bench, we would have heard something about the wonderful helicopter down at Farnborough. Why was it not suggested that on Saturday afternoons we might have young men, instead of going about on motor bicycles, going about in helicopters?

Sir S. HOARE: Would it be in order?

Mr. HARDIE: Yes, I think so, because we are dealing with flying. But I will say this, that I would not have been in order if I had been saying that the helicopter we knew of had ever done any flying. I would have been out of order then, because I would not have been—

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member is not right in saying that anything connected with flying is in order. We must deal with what is dealt with in the Bill, which is for raising an Auxiliary Air Force.

Mr. HARDIE: I thought that, instead of providing an ordinary aeroplane for that, we might introduce something new in the way of a helicopter, because, if we want to increase the death rate, this would do it more rapidly than anything else. The serious question, however, is that of having the men efficient, and the only efficiency you can have is to have your engineer able, not only to understand his engine, but to build it and design it, if need be, and to work it and put right anything likely to go wrong; that, with the absolutely highest skill that can be obtained in the pilot, would give a combination with some chance of something being done, but to go on the lines of the niggardly business of this Bill, suggesting that you can turn Saturday afternoon sport into what you require for flying, is ridiculous. If it were going to be a real development of the science of aeronautics, then, of course, I would gladly spend any money.

Earl WINTERTON: There is a complete answer to what the hon. Member for Springburn (Mr. Hardie) has just said, and I am afraid that he, with one or two other hon. Members, has misunderstood the purpose of this Bill and the class, both of flying officers and men, whom it is proposed to enlist. Before giving that answer, which I am sure is the same as that which the Under-Secretary will give when he comes to reply later on, I should like to observe that I have listened
throughout the Debate, in one of the thinnest Houses I have seen in this Parliament, to a discussion on a Bill which may have fundamental results upon the defence of this country, and I trust that no hon. Members opposite will think I am offensive when I say that, in my experience of Parliament, all the best schemes for the defence of this country have got through when there has been a thin representation of both Liberal and Labour Members in the House. We have had the advantage this afternoon of a complete absence of the pacifists. I, of course, exclude the hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain Benn), because he, like myself, has had a long experience of this matter, and I think he will admit that the most bitter speeches against armaments before the War came from the Liberal benches, just as the most bitter speeches against armaments now come from the Labour benches.
6.0 P.M.
We have had this afternoon, as I say—and all who are interested in the Air defence of this country are grateful for the fact—an almost complete absence of pacifists, both from the House and from the Debate. The one exception was the Under-Secretary, but with the exception of a reference to his own personal view, which, I think, none of us on this side of the House will blame him for making, the Under-Secretary put forward the case for the Bill—which, I believe, is a more important Measure than the House realises—in a most moderate and reasonable speech, in which he explained clearly the object of it. I, for one, feel exceedingly grateful for the fact that we have got through the Debate without hearing those speeches which are common on these occasions against air armaments, or any other armaments. The first thing about which I should like to say a word is the case of the Territorial Associations. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Leith, in one of those delightfully genial speeches to which we are accustomed, made a certain amount of fun of the Territorial Associations and their military attitude, or what was likely to be their military attitude, with regard to flying. He said, for example, that the military mind insisted upon uniformity, and he went on to say that the exact opposite was needed where protection from air attack was concerned. He expressed doubt whether it
was advisable that the Associations should be responsible. The point, I think, which escaped his notice is that the Territorial Associations are not meant to be, primarily, a military organisation. The Territorial organisation was founded by a Bill introduced in 1908 by Lord Haldane, who said at the time that he was anxious to divorce the new Territorial Force which he was setting up from the direct control of purely military authorities. He wished it to be, as it should be, an auxiliary volunteer force, the responsibility for raising which rested primarily upon the shoulders of the representatives of all classes and all opinions in the different districts and towns.
That was the original conception of the Territorial Associations, and it has been, in the long run, very fairly carried out. You get on these associations—I have been a member of one for the last 16 years, ever since it came into being—men, I am glad to say, of all professions, of different positions in life and of varying political opinions. I may mention, in passing, that I happened to see the other day a return, which was printed for the Territorial Association of which I am a member, of recruiting in the different counties and areas in England, and it was interesting to note that three of the divisions which were first in the best recruiting results, as it happened, came, in one case from a county predominantly supporting hon. Members below the Gangway opposite, in the second case from a county predominantly supporting hon. Members above the Gangway opposite, and, in the third case, from a county predominantly supporting the party on this side of the House, so that politically there was nothing in it. It goes without saying that those associations are non-political and non-partisan, and I think they are far more valuable than the public as a whole realises. It would, obviously, be out of order to enlarge on that subject this afternoon, but as these associations are going to have devolved upon them very important new duties under this Bill, I should like to say a word further about their position.
I have just said that I think they have done in the past, and are doing to-day, very good work, but, at the same time, I am convinced that these Territorial Associations not only cannot do the work
they are being asked to do now, but will not be able to do the work they are being asked to do under this Bill, unless the public and the authorities as a whole back them up. For example, I do not remember to have read a speech—I am saying it in no spirit of criticism—by any leading member of the present Government urging the public to join the Territorial Force and to support the Territorial Associations in the work they are doing, quite irrespective of party, and I would suggest that a speech, for example, from the Secretary of State for War, or the Air Minister, advocating support of the Territorials generally, and especially of this Auxiliary Force we are discussing this afternoon, would be of benefit. Then, too, I think this would be an appropriate occasion, when we are enlarging the powers of these associations, to urge upon local authorities, upon mayors of boroughs, upon chairmen of urban districts, and upon all those in authority generally on local bodies, that they might do more to help the Territorial Associations in recruiting, and to help units to obtain recruits. I think it would be a very appropriate occasion to call attention to what is really their duty in the matter, in view of these fresh responsibilities which are being put upon the associations.
I come to the argument which has just been used by the hon. Gentleman opposite, and which, I think, was used to some extent also by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Clitheroe (Captain Brass). It was, as I understood, to this effect: How are you going, in the limited time which, we all know, is at the disposal of the average Territorial for the annual training, and for the weekly or fortnightly half-day or evening—it may be two hours—given up for training, adequately to train people for service in the air, one of the most technical services that can possibly be undertaken? The answer to that, I think, is this, and it is a complete answer to the hon. Member opposite. As I understand, it is not proposed to enlist as a pilot in this force anyone who has not already got a pilot's certificate. It is a very well-known fact that there are a great number of ex-air officers at present doing other work, who have done gallant work in the War, who have a complete knowledge of flying, and, of course, it goes without saying they
have a pilot's certificate. It is hoped, as I am assured by my right hon. Friend who sits beside me, that from that class you will get the nucleus of this Force. But, in the second place, as air operations increase, as the value of the air for commercial purposes becomes more and more developed, which we all hope it may become, there will be, presumably, a large number of fresh pilots trained for commercial purposes every year, and I hope among those pilots will be found every year a number of recruits to this Force. In fact, I can conceive the time coming very soon when there will be far more pilots in this country trained for commercial purposes than this Force could contain if all the squadrons it is proposed to form were filled up. I think that is not an exaggerated statement when we think how air development is coming along. I am very glad the Government have brought in this Bill, because I think it is the clear, absolute duty of any Government at the present time, faced with the situation we are in the air from a commercial and defence point of view.

Mr. HARDIE: The point with which I was dealing was this. You want to train young men, do you not? The right hon. Gentleman has not shown in his speech how these men are to be trained.

Earl WINTERTON: I think I have answered the argument. I say there are to-day a large number of trained airmen in every sense of the word, and as flying develops, as it is doing to-day, there will be an increasing number of trained pilots.

Mr. HARDIE: Where are they being trained?

Earl WINTERTON: They are being trained through the civil training authorities. They are being trained as civil aviation develops. Just as, in the early days of steamships, there was only a small proportion of skilled marine engineers, as the steamships developed in the forties, 'fifties and 'sixties, there was witnessed a progressive development of that splendid profession, class, school, or whatever you like to call it, of trained marine engineers. Exactly the same thing is going on to-day in the air, and I hope it is not undue national pride when I say that I myself have not the slightest doubt we shall produce in the air as fine commercial airmen and pilots as we have produced sea-
men and marine engineers. I think it is in the blood of Englishmen, Scotsmen, Welshmen, and everyone in these islands to be able to do that sort of work. In fact, I am told to-day it is a remarkable fact to see the difference in the number of passengers carried by commercial British and French machines. People go in the British machines because they trust the pilots.

Captain BRASS: There are only 24 British commercial pilots.

Earl WINTERTON: I am quite aware that the number is small, and an endeavour is being made to redress that state of affairs. It is those men we want to get hold of. Everything must have a beginning. If you were to say at the beginning of this great industry that we have not got enough pilots, and not enough men, and, therefore, we cannot possibly form a force of this kind, you would be making a mistake. The thing is to build up the Force as you build up civil aviation. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Clitheroe referred to another aspect of the same matter. He said, for example, that in the Yeomanry you could train men comparatively easily in horsemanship, and for duties connected with the Yeomanry. In my experience, the men who joined the Yeomanry were, not entirely but in the main, men who had previous experience of horses. I think the same sort of thing will apply in this case. You will get men who have had experience in the air. The hon. Gentleman raised the question of how you would train them, and gave the case of a county in which I reside. It was an unfortunate analogy, because there is a large aerodrome there. He asked what would happen to a man at Chichester if he wanted to join. As a matter of fact, he would apply at an aerodrome three miles away.

Captain BRASS: But would the aerodrome at that particular place have the necessary mechanics?

Earl WINTERTON: My right hon. Friend's ideas were—and, presumably, they will be carried out by the present Government—in the first place, only to have six or seven of these associations contemplated in the Bill, and they would be mainly in industrial areas, or areas contiguous to an existing aerodrome,
where, it was thought, they could get the right sort of men; but, as the thing grew, no doubt they would be able to extend the system, and, no doubt, with the growth of civil aviation, you would have more grounds available. It will no doubt be possible to come to an arrangement, such as is contemplated in the Bill, by which aerodromes might be used for this purpose. Anyhow, I suggest that the House will be well advised to support the Government; indeed, there is very little opposition to the passing of this Bill, and why I said at the commencement of my speech, as I did say, that we were really dealing with a most important and fundamental question this afternoon, was because we are really by this Bill making a start, and I think on the whole a good start, with the principle of a voluntary auxiliary air service in defence of these shores.
It cannot, of course, take the place of a regular air force, but it can assist the force, and if what I think—quite frankly—is the foolish refusal of this country to face the real problem of an adequate air defence equal to that of any other country in Europe—in the absence of any such inclination or possibility of public opinion on the question being brought round—this Bill, which had its origin in my right hon. Friend beside ms (Sir S. Hoare) is a valuable Bill, and I believe will do a good deal to increase the air spirit of which we have heard this afternoon. I trust the hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary of State for Air will not listen to the suggestion made in some quarters during this Debate, and will not fail to provide adequate money to carry out the proposals in the Bill. I wish that this little Auxiliary Air Force in its early years shall be given not only the best attention of expert air opinion that the Air Ministry can give it, but that it also shall not be stinted in money; also that it will receive the blessing and good will of this House, and the encouragement of Members of the Government.

Mr. LEACH: I am going to deal, perhaps inadequately, with some of the points raised in the course of discussion. First of all, I have to express appreciation at the friendly reception of the Bill. I realise that no real opposition has been expressed to the principle involved, although a good many inquiries have been addressed to me in regard to details and
difficulties which hon. Members seem to foresee in the carrying out of the Bill. In this latter respect, I am indebted to the Noble Lord the Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton), because he has, very successfully, I hope, cleared some of those difficulties away from the minds of hon. Members who have raised them. I want to make it clear—perhaps I should have done so better in my opening observations—that the Bill is in the nature of an experiment. It is not a big experiment, but it may be a big principle that underlies the Bill, The experiment is confined to limited areas and quite limited dimensions. The Auxiliary Air Force itself, it is proposed, shall consist of six squadrons, and we hope to raise them this year.
The total number of officers who will be enlisted for these six squadrons will be round about 160, and possibly there will be 1,000 men of other ranks. The Special Reserve Force which this Bill raises is also a limited experiment. We are suggesting seven squadrons for a Special Reserve Force, and this will involve 104 officers and 780 men for home defence purposes solely, so that the House will realise that some of the difficulties which hon. Members have been raising must surely appear rather smaller in view of the size of the experiment itself. We propose that no officer shall be given a commission in the Auxiliary Air Force except he has learned to fly. I will go further and say in order to enlist the extra number of men who are going into training in order to learn to fly that we are very favourably inclined to consider the question of making them grants for the purpose of covering the cost. Further, we are not proposing to raise any squadrons in areas where, as in Sussex, there is no population.

Earl WINTERTON: Let me at once remind my hon. Friend that the population of Sussex has increased to a greater extent, as shown by the last census, than any other county in England.

Mr. LEACH: Very probably Sussex might in the course of time rank for a squadron or two under the scheme. We are not proposing, in our operations, to raise squadrons in the country districts, and I would further say that we are not going to employ amateur mechanics. The work will all be done by properly qualified people. The aerodrome
question has not been lost sight of. We are investigating, in connection with the Territorial Associations, which are the most suitable sites in which to pursue operations. All our airmen will be trained mechanics. Then as to the Joint Associations, what we suggest I fell confident will work out as we think. Certainly others considering the matter are also confident about it, but it may turn out that the experiment is not successful, and that the proposed way of working is perhaps not the best form of administration. In that case the Bill does provide, if it be thought desirable, for the dissolution of the Joint Associations and the resumption of the status quo. I was asked by one hon. Friend to define what was meant by liability to be called up for service within the British Isles. If hon. Members will turn to Clause 5—and I thought the Bill made it perfectly clear—they will read in Sub-section (1) that:
(1) It shall be lawful for His Majesty by Order in Council declaring that a case of emergency exists, to order a Secretary of State to give, and when given to revoke or vary, such directions as may seem necessary or proper for calling out to serve within the British Islands in defence of the British Islands against actual or apprehended attack all or any of the officers and men of the Auxiliary Air Force or Air Force Reserve who in pursuance of this Act are liable to be called out and to serve as aforesaid.
Again, if they will look at Clause 6, Sub-section (5), they will see
(5) For the purposes of this Act .… service on any flight of which the points of departure and intended return are within the British Islands or the territorial waters thereof, shall be deemed to be service within the British Islands notwithstanding that the flight may in its course extend beyond those limits.
Perhaps the hon. and gallant Gentleman has not observed closely what that Sub-section says?

Captain BERKELEY: May I clear up that point? Attack is sometimes the best form of defence. Does the Clause imply a liability to be called up and sent forth to make an attack upon the air force of the opponent State?

Mr. LEACH: Always as provided in the Sub-section I have just quoted. Therefore, if the foreign country is within the capacity of aeroplanes to fly under these conditions they will do it. I think I have dealt with most of the points raised by hon. Members.

Viscount CURZON: Will the Under-Secretary also deal with the question of cost, training, modern machines, and life insurance?

Mr. LEACH: I cannot, I am afraid, give the precise cost, but the Estimates have already been presented and accepted by the House, and we do not propose to exceed the Estimates. Undoubtedly, we shall have to go in for new machines, and in regard to life insurance, the men will be under precisely the same conditions as in the Regular Air Service.

Viscount CURZON: May I make it quite clear? If a young man in civil life goes into the Air Force, he may perhaps have a life insurance policy. What is going to be the effect of enlistment upon that life insurance policy, or, alternatively, will it be necessary for him to take out a life insurance policy, and will the Government bear that in mind?

Mr. LEACH: Certainly we have that in mind.

Captain BRASS: The hon. Gentleman has said that skilled mechanics would be employed. Where will he get those men from? Will he enlist the help of the Territorial Associations in this matter?

Mr. LEACH: For The purposes of this Bill we will have to make our operations in those districts where we have an engineering population. I assume we shall be able to find those who are properly skilled.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee.

Orders of the Day — WAR CHARGES (VALIDITY) (No. 2) BILL.

Considered in Committee. [Progress, 14th May.]

[Mr. ENTWISTLE in the Chair.]

CLALUSE 1.—(Validity of certain War charges and levies.)

Sir HERBERT NIELD: I beg to move in page 2, line 22, after the word "instituted" to insert the words
after the passing of this Act in respect of any claim not made before the thirty-first day of August, nineteen hundred and twenty-two.
I make no apology for having put down this Amendment and the other Amendments which stand in my name, which substantially involve the same point The question is from what date should the Bill operate. According to the speech of the Minister on the Second Reading, it was intended to operate as from the moment when the Court of Appeal decided the milk case in favour of the plaintiffs and against the Crown. The Minister said again and again that if the case was not reversed by the House of Lords, he was prepared to introduce a Bill to nullify the effect of that decision.
I will not argue as to the unconstitutional nature of this legislation. All I am concerned with is that I am anxious that the Crown should not go on adding to unconstitutional legislation by limiting such claims as might survive in a way which means taking advantage of their own wrong. I say that deliberately, and as I stated yesterday before the Standing Committee, times have come to a strange pass when the House of Commons is told that they are to take a thing or leave it, and on this occasion that they have to take this Bill just as and when and in such terms as the Government are pleased to propose. The position of the Government is stronger since they can quote the present occupants of the Front Opposition Bench as having promoted the same kind of legislation in a previous Parliament. It is unfortunate that a Coalition, a most unwholesome method of government, should have set an unwholesome example which has had to be followed by its successors.
My Amendment proposes to raise the vital question which is the one question, above all others, upon this Committee stage, what is the date from which claims should be barred? The Courts said it should be March, 1922, and an Indemnity Act was passed in 1922 or the latter part of the Session 1921, which provided that no claim should be made against the Crown after the conclusion of the War, that is to say, after the 31st day of August, 1922. That is the date which I wish to insert in the Bill. The Committee will recollect that the Minister spoke about £18,000,000 being involved. He was challenged as to that amount, and it is in fact true that when you examine the White Paper it shows that the number of claims which have been put forward are infinitely less.
In respect of claims arising from the Ministry of Shipping with which I am particularly concerned they do not amount to any more than £81,020. Those claims were put in before the date which I am suggesting should be inserted in this Clause. It is true that there are other claims arising from other Departments, but for the most part they are barred. It will be recollected that a case was cited in which it was held that no claims after the expiration of 31st August, 1922, could succeed, and in the Bristol steamship case the action was dismissed under the Indemnity Act. Therefore no action can arise in respect of any matter in which a claim was not made before the 31st August, 1922. The words are:
No proceedings whatever shall be instituted.
There are three methods of putting forward a claim against the Crown. There was before the War a compensation case that was taken as early as February, 1922, well within the period of the Indemnity Act. Not being content with these proceedings the claimants issued a writ on the 5th of July, 1922, well within the period, and finally they presented a Petition of Right on the 14th of July. It has been held, and I do not suppose that it will be challenged in this House, that there is a technical meaning to the word "institute" in relation to legal proceedings. It means sealing the writ and the sealing of the Petition of Right Application for a fiat to the Home Office has to be made before a Petition of Right can be sealed by the Central Office of the High Court of Justice in a suit against the Crown. On the 7th of July, 1922, the advisers of the Marshal Shipping Company asked the Home Office for the usual fiat "let right be done" to be fixed to enable them to institute these proceedings.
Will the Committee really believe that notwithstanding all the efforts that could possibly be made in order to get that fiat issued and the petition sealed, it was not given until February, 1924, for an application which was dated the 7th of July, 1922? I am sorry to say there are too many of these cases arising out of the War claims in which the authorities, I care not which Departments, have played with these applicants very much in the same way as a cat plays with a mouse, and in many cases they have not succeeded in getting
their case before the proper tribunal which has jurisdiction.
Take the case of the Marshal Shipping Company in relation to their writ. They issued their writ. I may remind hon. Members that the Board of Trade consists of a number of conglomerated people of whom the Archbishop of Canterbury is one. Of course, the solicitors shuddered at having to serve the Archbishop of Canterbury with a writ, and consequently they served the only person whom they reasonably could serve, and that was the Permanent Secretary to the Board of Trade.
One would have thought that if the Government of the day or the Board of Trade were anxious to get this question decided upon its merits they would not have raised a purely technical point of law, but nevertheless they raised the question that the writ was not properly served, and that the whole proceedings fell to the ground on that account, and they succeeded. Here I would like to quote the satirical observations made in this connection by Lord Justice Scrutton in relation to the discharge of the action and the dismissal of the proceedings because the writ was held to be improperly served. He said:
This appeal from the judgment of Mr. Justice Rowlatt raises a question in my view of very considerable difficulty on the language of some not very clearly worded Acts of Parliament and Orders in Council. I personally feel that the whole question of proceedings against Government Departments is in a very unsatisfactory state. I feel that it is of great public importance that there should be prompt and efficient means of calling in question the legality of the action of Government Departments who, owing to the great national urgencies of the War, have been inclined to take, and I think are still inclined to take, prompt action which they consider necessary in the interests of the State without any nice consideration of whether it is legal or not, and I hope that the Committee which is considering the question of proceedings against the Crown will be able soon to do something to give the subject more effective remedies against Government Departments than he has at present. But, of course, this Court is not here to settle what the law ought to be, this Court is here to settle what the law is, if it can.
Then the learned Judge goes on to say:
The third question, which is one of service, I have already dealt with. I only wish to say this more, that in view of the extreme difficulty of this case, and of the importance that Government Departments should not put unnecessary obstacles in the
way of subjects who may have good claims, I should very much regret if any obstacle was put in the way of a Petition of Right of this nature; that you shall only have a Petition of Right if you abandon all alternative claims.
And yet the granting of the fiat was held up upon the excuse put forward that they must first withdraw the claim which was pending before the War Compensation Court. Lord Justice Scrutton proceeded to say:
I think that is a very regrettable position for a Government Department, or for the Government, to take up.
For these reasons the appeal failed, and that shows the difficulty this particular company have had, and I am only giving one instance which I know can be multiplied in regard to the difficulty these claimants have in getting before the proper tribunal to determine their case, and they were prevented by a number of questions of that sort. Eight days ago, on the 13th of this month, an application was made to the Law Courts in the matter of this claim of the Marshal Shipping Company, founded upon the petition of right in connection with which the fiat was so tardily given, to expedite the hearing of the case in order that judgment might be obtained. I will not, because I recognise that there are others who are to follow me, attempt to read the shorthand notes of the application and the observations of the learned Judge, except that, so fine were the arguments put forward by the junior counsel representing the Crown, that the Judge was at last, I might almost say betrayed, or at any rate induced, to make the following statement:
Your point is that all your tactical steps taken on behalf of what I call the defendants occurred before the launching of this petition?"—
to which Counsel replied—
I respectfully dissent from the word 'tactical.' I am not here to defend the Home Secretary and what he does in advising the Crown. I also submit that your Lordship cannot decide on that point.
Later on, counsel was obliged again to say:
I am not here to defend other Departments I do not know. No doubt that course seemed best to them in advising the Crown. I am not here to defend them.
Ultimately, the learned Judge suggested that the Attorney-General should be
approached in order to fix an early date. At the conclusion of the hearing, Counsel for the Crown asked for the costs of the application, but he did not get them. I could multiply these instances, and even in this particular case I could, by referring to correspondence, show how this company has struggled for upwards of two years to get their cause before the tribunal that was able to hear it. I am not suggesting that the present Attorney-General, who has only come recently into office, had anything to do with it, but the truth is that the Attorney-General's alleged convenience was made again and again the ground for not agreeing a day upon which these cases should be heard. As I have said, I exclude the present Attorney-General, but they are all the same. Whether Governments or individuals, they are all tarred with the same brush. The Attorney-General's predecessors are the persons against whom I make this particular charge that, over and over again, these causes stood over because of the alleged convenience of the counsel for the Crown, and, in the end, these people have not been able to get any redress at all.
The burden of my Amendment is this: I am speaking of when the claim was made, not of when it was instituted, because, as I have pointed out to the Committee, and have, I hope, established, the institution of the claim means the sealing either of the writ or of the petition, and where the petitioner was wholly at the mercy of a public Department, and that public Department has wantonly and deliberately prevented him from qualifying and putting in his writ, it ought not to be permitted to take advantage of its own wrong. This Amendment, if it be agreed to, will preserve the claims in so far as they are within the Indemnity Act, and will lay it down that any claim made—not instituted—before the 31st August, 1922, is a claim which ought to be permitted to go forward for trial, and, when the trial has taken place, ought to be admitted as a bona fide claim to be discharged by the Government. I desire to say only one word more. A case has already been tried which was commenced later than the case of the Marshal Shipping Company, and I hold in my hand particulars furnished by the Board of Trade of the dates when the petition was lodged and when the fiat was granted.
In the case of the Marshal Shipping Company, the petition was received by the Law Officers' Department on the 2nd August, 1922, and it is stated here that—
The fiat which was first produced on the 6th October, 1922, was granted on an undertaking by the suppliants to abandon proceedings in respect of the same claim before the War Compensation Court on the 17th January, 1924.
That was the very thing upon which Lord Justice Scrutton said they ought not to insist. But in the case of Messrs. T. and J. Brocklebank, Limited, the petition was lodged on the 19th September, and the claim was made long before that, namely, according to the White Paper, on the 14th July. The petition was actually received by the Law Officers' Department on the 19th September, and the fiat was granted on the 2nd September—a very substantial lapse of time. The Brocklebank case has gone through for trial, and the result has been against the Crown. The Crown are appealing. I aim informed that an undertaking was given by a letter of the 16th January, 1924, sent by the solicitor of the Board of Trade to the solicitors of the Equinox Steamship Company, Limited, that they would be bound by the decision given in the Brocklebank case; so that that is another case which is well within the limit proposed to be inserted in this Clause. I am also informed that a like letter was given by the solicitor of the Board of Trade to the liquidator of the Marshal Shipping Company; so there has been, apparently, a deliberate promise that the case of the Brocklebank Company should bind the cases of the Marshal Shipping Company and of the Equinox Steamship Company. If that be so, one might ask for a pro forma attachment for the petitioners in both those cases. I ask, for the honour of the House of Commons and of this country, that, when retrospective legislation of an unconstitutional character has to be accepted by the House, the House should be very slow in extending it beyond what is absolutely necessary, and, inasmuch as a period has been fixed by the Indemnity Act, I venture to hope that this Committee will take a strong view of the case, and will say that, in so far as the claims were made—not instituted—before the 31st August, 1922, those claims shall be
treated as valid, and the Government shall discharge their obligations with regard to them.

Mr. LEIF JONES: This Amendment raises a very definite and distinct point of considerable constitutional importance, but it is not, I think, a point that we need discuss at any very great length to-day, because it has already been discussed twice in the House. I put down on the Paper a series of Amendments which, I believe, would have had exactly the same effect as this one, and, although this is the third time of asking, I do not wholly despair of persuading the Committee to accept this Amendment, nor am I without some hope that the Government themselves may be disposed to modify their view to meet it. I think the House decided against this Amendment when it was raised on the Financial Resolution, and practically decided against it when they voted on the Amendment which I moved on the Second Reading, not so much because they wished to indulge in this retrospective legislation—which I believe is abhorrent to all Members of the House—as because the President of the Board of Trade alarmed them by the large figure which he mentioned as being involved in the Amendment and in the passing of this Bill. The right hon. Gentleman said, I think on the Financial Resolution, what I think very much impressed the House—and it is borne out by the White Paper—that, unless the Bill is passed, the Treasury stand to lose anything up to £18,500,000. I think it has been that statement that has made the House hitherto decline to face the exact issue raised by this Amendment.
I submit that that statement is wholly inaccurate. I do not think that the Attorney-General will for a moment bear out the statement of the President of the Board of Trade that there is any sum of that kind involved. The only sum of money involved, and the only claims that fall to be considered, are, I submit, those claims which were lodged within the period provided by the Indemnity Act. My right hon. Friend, the Member for Ealing (Sir H. Nield) gave the date of that Act as 1922. He had forgotten that the Indemnity Act was passed in 1920, and it gave notice that in respect of all claims against the Government or against any officials for acts done during the
War, an indemnity was granted, except in the case of such claims as were lodged within 12 months of the termination of the War. That date, namely, twelve months after the termination of the War, had not yet been fixed when the Indemnity Act was passed; it was left to be fixed by an Order in Council, and the date ultimately fixed as the official termination of the War was the 31st August, 1921. That gave suitors and claimants until the 31st August, 1922, to lodge any of these claims, and here I want to submit to the Government a point that was not dealt with in the earlier Debates.
The Indemnity Act, when it fixed the date within which claims might be brought, practically said to suitors and claimants in this country, "If you have any claim against the Government, bring it within 12 months after the termination of the War, or your claim will be barred." It was like executors advertising that bills must be presented within a certain time or they would not be met. It was an invitation to people in this country who had been aggrieved by the action of Departments or Ministers to lodge their claims within that period, and I really am surprised that the very Government which passed that Indemnity Act actually proposed a War Charges (Validity) Bill, which blocked claims which had arisen even after the Indemnity Act had been passed. That is not the way in which Parliament should handle claims by the subject. The Indemnity Act is passed, and the date is fixed within which claims must be lodged. Those claims are lodged, and the Department, finding their actions challenged, draft a War Charges (Validity) Bill, which is to block those very claims. The President of the Board of Trade appears to be under some apprehension lest the whole £18,500,000 may be involved. I have no such anxiety, nor do I think the Attorney-General has any such anxiety, but, if the right hon. Gentleman feels that anxiety, let the Government accept this Amendment and pass the Bill. That, at any rate, will bar all these undefined and vague charges My reason for feeling certain on this point—I have no claim to pronounce on any point of law—is the High Court decision which was delivered
on the very day on which the Financial Resolution was being discussed in this House.
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A claim was made after the 31st August, 1922—a petition of right. It came before the High Court, and the Judge ruled that the petition was not lodged within one year from the termination of the War, and therefore it was too late. I appeal to the Attorney-General to tell us whether, in his opinion, that case does not really govern all these cases and that no possible claim can arise against any Government Department in connection with any of those acts committed during or immediately after the War. The purpose of the Amendment is to secure that in those cases a legal decision shall be given. Where a legal decision has been given, it shall stand; where it has not been given, it shall proceed to a decision and the Government abide by it. I cannot find out precisely what amount of money is involved. From my point of view, that is not very important. As a matter of fact, I do not think the sum reaches £100,000. I am confident it cannot reach £250,000, and I submit that we ought not to pass retrospective legislation. Large or small, I submit that this claim should not be barred. If the sum at stake be small, the principle is a great one. Is it not most unwise and unjust for this House to intervene in the middle of legal proceedings and block the subject from the legal redress he has sought. If the Department broke the law, they will be brought to Court. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, and the right, hon. Gentleman the late President of the Board of Trade, joined together in regard to this Amendment. They both urged, "It is all very well, the claimants are small in number, and the amount involved may not be large." "But," said the right hon. Gentleman opposite, "all of us brought pressure to bear upon the claimants not to proceed with their cases, because we were going to pass a War Charges Validity Bill." "And," says the President of the Board of Trade to-day, "I cannot do justice to your claims, because there are those who would have had a claim if they had not been induced not to put it forward." I recognise the fact that there are such people in this country. I am sorry for them.
The right hon. Gentleman (Sir P. Lloyd-Greame) has just come in. His argument was that we could hardly do justice to the people whose claims would be considered under this Amendment because of those other people in this country whom he, and other Ministers, had impressed with the fact that the late Government intended to bring in a War Charges Validity Bill and to pass it into law, and that therefore they should refrain from taking legal proceedings. There is a good deal of force in that argument. I am sorry for those people who were induced by the blandishments of the right hon. Gentleman to refrain from having recourse to the law. It would be a very evil day for this country if it were to be said that the word or promise of a Minister is the same thing as the law. The pledge of a Minister is a very different thing from an Act of Parliament. It by no means follows that because a pledge is given, any attempt will be made to fulfil that pledge. Still less is a claimant justified in treating promises to bring in a Bill as equal to the Bill being passed, and that therefore they must stop their proceedings because of the intention of the Government. I am sorry for the people who were deceived by the promises of the Government. It must be admitted that, looking at the experience of politics and life in this country, they are very imprudent people who treat pledges and promises of Ministers as if they were Acts of Parliament. All Ministers think that they are there for life and that they cannot be dispensed with. As a matter of fact, Ministers are the creatures of a day. They are here one day and gone another, and to treat their pledges and promises as if they were in fact law is really not ordinary common sense.
Therefore, I submit to the Committee that it is no good reason for not allowing these cases to go forward to a decision that, but for the promise of the passing of this Bill, there would have been more claims of this kind to consider. What we have before us is a demand from the Government that we shall deprive claimants of their legal and constitutional redress, and for no reason except that there are some others who might also have claimed redress and have not done so. I think that is a wholly unreasonable course for the Government to take, and I hope it will not pass this retrospective legislation with no great
cause. I have no particular sympathy that I know of with the suitors. I do not know many detailed cases such as the hon. and learned Gentleman stated. Some of the claimants, I believe, are brewers. I am not likely to stand up to advocate their claims. I am advocating the claims of justice, whoever it may be, whether shipowners, brewers, or milk distributors who had a real grievance against the Government and who brought their actions. I think the House ought to do justice to them and not intervene in the cases between the Courts and the suitors.

The ATTORNEY - GENERAL (Sir Patrick Hastings): I cannot help feeling that at the moment the Committee must be in a considerable state of doubt and, certainly, under a serious misapprehension with regard to one or two of the matters underlying this Amendment. I do not propose to go into the merits or the demerits of the whole of this Bill. It has been debated twice, and I do not think any useful purpose would be served by going through it again. I want to point out what this Amendment means. The suggestion underlying it is that there should be a line drawn which should be precisely the same as that of the Indemnity Act, and the criticism which has been put forward by two hon. Members is that, under the Indemnity Act, all claims brought forward after a period of one year from the expiration of the War are already barred. That is a very unfortunate and a very misleading argument to put forward. I am sorry my right hon. and learned Friend (Sir H. Nield) should have put it forward. He was the counsel in the case. He and I were opposed to each other. They were cases of great difficulties. I will be very careful to say no more than I need, but I very seriously warn the Committee that if they think that that point has been decided for all time, they are running a very grave risk indeed. Both cases were decided by the same Judge. He was in such doubt about his decision—the points taken were not the same in each case—and without giving away any further information I may say that, in my view, there are at least two other points which might be raised in similar cases and which might very seriously affect the decision. I am prepared to say this: If cases of that sort were to go to the
Court of Appeal or to the House of Lords, in my opinion, either of the parties would not be surprised to find either or both those Courts, in turn, reversing the decision. It is really not right that the Committee should be left for one moment under the impression that these decisions are final.

Mr. JONES: Would the hon. and learned Gentleman be prepared, on behalf of the Government, to put a Clause into this Bill which would make that judgment the law of the land? I should have no objection to that.

The ATTORNEY - GENERAL: One thing at a time. I have been expressly asked. On the last occasion, when, unfortunately, I was unable to be here, many Members of the House, expressed dissatisfaction that the Attorney-General was not here to answer this point, and when I am answering this point it is a little hard to be asked to answer another. My right hon. Friend said there was a risk of £18,000,000 under this Bill. I concur entirely, not only with what he said but with the figures he gave. There is the gravest risk. The Committee should have in its mind that £18,000,000 is at stake in this matter, and it will not do to hide behind the Bristol Channel cases. There is another matter which has been put forward. I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Member for Ealing has had to leave the Committee, because he did make some observations to which I must refer. It is the practice in every Parliament to abuse the Attorney-General, and I am fortunate in this case that the two Attorney-Generals that have been abused have not been me but my two predecessors, who, unfortunately, are not here able to defend themselves. I am going to try to defend them both, because a very unfair and unwarrantable attack has been made upon them. According to my view, the attacks upon them were, really, without foundation at all. The suggestion made about my predecessor is, that application having been made in October, 1922, the Attorney-General of the day neglected the matter until January, 1924, and took no notice of it. He waited for nearly 18 months and then, finally, thought fit or proper to give a fiat. In October the Attorney-General of 1922 was asked to give a fiat. At that time this
company had lodged proceedings already in the War Compensation Court. He wanted a fiat for another set of proceedings in another Court to go on at the same time as proceedings in the War Compensation Court. The Attorney-General of the day said he could not see his way to advise His Majesty to grant the fiat while the proceedings were going on, but directly they were abandoned he would grant the fiat. From that day until January, 1924, the Attorney-General never had a message from the company of any kind. They never took the trouble to answer him or to tell him anything about it, and for my right hon. Friend who has left the Committee to have left us under the impression that my predecessor acted in such a way as that seems to me to be unfortunate, and though I am happily, for the first time, not defending myself but someone else, I am glad to have the opportunity of making it clear. My right hon. Friend made another observation about this which was equally unfair. He said he was asked to give a fiat in July, and did not give it until October. Personal feeling may creep in, and possibly other persons have suffered also, but if the Attorney-General stays in the Law Courts and does his work at once, he is blamed for being there, and if he waits, because he is pressed with other duties, and does not give it at once, he is blamed for being here and not being these. On 17th July, just before the Long Vacation, the Attorney-General gave the fiat, and I do not think anyone can say there was any unreasonable delay, as nothing could be done during the vacation.
Another very serious attack was made on the Department by the same right hon. Gentleman in regard to Marshall Company. It is quite untrue. They were not misled in any way, and the only reason why the Marshall Company delayed was because they did not take advantage of the Attorney-General's suggestion made to them 18 months before. Those are the two legal matters which have been raised. One is the question of the Indemnity Act. With real seriousness I repeat my warning. I hope the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the Hartlepools, if he thinks proper to intervene in the Debate again, will emphasise my warning. These decisions were the decisions of a learned Judge of first instance. They were decisions given with deliberation.
There is nothing to prevent other people starting proceedings except that decision, and there is nothing to prevent the Court of Appeal or the House of Lords dealing afresh with them any time they think fit.

Mr. JOWITT: They do not touch the Amendment.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: It is no good saying they do not touch the Amendment. It has already been pointed out that they do not touch the Amendment, but when hon. Members are being asked to record their votes they ought not to be allowed to remain under a misapprehension.
One word about the Amendment. Anyone who cares to could find previous utterances of most Members on these benches, and of myself, expressing the greatest disapproval of retrospective legislation. Everyone agrees with that. I have spoken as strongly as anyone, but that has nothing to do with what we are considering now. When my predecessor, speaking at this box on the Money Resolution, called attention to the importance of not breaking pledges he said, inasmuch as definite pledges have been given with regard to the milk case by the Government as to what they would do, they ought to be carried out. In my view I say deliberately it would be a gross breach of faith to other persons who are interested in this matter if this Amendment was passed. The figures given by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ealing were absolutely wild in my estimation. The only cases I am dealing with which were started before March, 1922, were three cases, one of which has been abandoned, and the other two together only involved the small sum of £20,000. In March, 1922, when persons obviously were considering their position, quite properly, with regard to this legislation, a statement was made by the then President of the Board of Trade, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bewdley (Mr. Baldwin), and in another place, where there was a discussion, the leaders or high representatives of both parties, Lord Birkenhead and Lord Buckmaster, made observations to the same effect, and in July, 1922, this Bill was actually introduced. There can be no question in the mind, I am sure, of everyone who really wants to deal with the matter impartially that it would be a cruel injustice to men who relied upon the
promise of the then President of the Board of Trade, and a declaration made, not in a speech outside the House, but from this box, that this legislation was going to be introduced, should be told to-morrow, "You who trusted the President of the Board of Trade and the Government and held your hand are to be put now in such a position that if you had disbelieved him and gone on with your actions you would have recovered the money." I urge this not as a party question, because this really does not affect my Government at all. It is a question of what is the right and fair thing to do. We know the position, that every one of these people would go home to-morrow and say, "We have been swindled. If only we had not trusted Mr. Baldwin when he made his observations with the weight of the Government behind him, and really with the weight of the House behind him!" because at that time no one could doubt that if the Bill had been introduced next day it would have passed at once.

Mr. HARNEY: Why assume that?

The ATTORNEY - GENERAL: One knows the majority there was in the House at that time and no one except the hon. and learned Gentleman had the slightest doubt that they would have passed it. I am trying to urge what I believe to be the real duty of everyone in the House, to see that these people are not allowed really to feel that they have been cheated, because it would have been grossly unfair—

Mr. JONES: What harm would it do them?

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: I do not know that that is quite a proper question to ask. All I know is that I have known many people who have thought they had been cheated and did not seem any the better for it. We are obliged to see that they are not cheated. I urge on the Committee for these reasons not to allow this Amendment to be carried but to insist on seeing that fair play is done to all these people.

Mr. JOWITT: We have listened to an exceedingly ingenious speech from the Attorney-General which has singularly little to do with the Amendment. He declines to discuss the general question of retrospective legislation on the ground that it does not really arise on the Amend-
ment. He says that was dealt with on the Second Reading. When he comes more particularly to the Amendment, instead of meeting it he discusses the general ground of the Bill. What is the effect of the Amendment? It says all claims made after 31st August, 1922, are barred. It is only validating claims which have been made before that date. What is the good of talking about giving a grave warning about the existing law? We are not considering the existing law apart from the Bill. We are considering this Amendment. I entirely agree with what the Attorney-General has said, and since he has asked me to, I will gladly support the warning he has given. Judges, like everyone else, are fallible. The Judge has decided that these claims made after 31st August, 1922, are barred, but it is only the decision of a Judge of First Instance. Anyone who knows anything about the law knows that the law is somewhat uncertain. I fully agree with the Attorney-General that it is possible that either in the Court of Appeal or in the House of Lords the decisions might be reversed, but that has nothing to do with this point. We are prepared to put it in the Bill that the judgment given by that Judge is the law of the land. To remove all possible doubt, let it be quite clear that claims made after 31st August, 1922, are barred. We concede that for the purpose of this Amendment. Then what do you do with claims made before 31st August, 1922? I think the Attorney-General must realise that his observations with regard to the possibility of reversing the decision of the learned Judge are nothing to the point. That being so, I should have liked to hear some answer to the observations of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ealing. The Attorney-General has not dealt with them at all. The right hon. Gentleman asked that the Committee should be informed as to the figures involved. It is no good repeating the £18,000,000 which we have heard about before. The £18,000,000 was on the basis of the whole thing being open. How much is involved? How many claims were made before August, 1922? On the occasion of the last Debate the right hon. Gentleman, who had the figures from some source which I do not remember at present, said there were only five claims. I do not
know whether that is right or not. I presume the amount involved is £100,000 or thereabouts—a comparatively small sum.

The ATTORNEY - GENERAL: One alone is £250,000.

Mr. JOWITT: I wonder if the Attorney-General could tell me what is the gross figure of the claims made before August, 1922.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Approximately £400,000 in ships alone.

Mr. JOWITT: Are there any, and, if so, how many claims other than shipping? I believe there are none. I have not gone into the matter, but even the face value of the claims is less than £500,000, and if this Amendment is passed you can only deal with £500,000, and to talk about £18,000,000 on this Amendment is really nothing to the point at all. It is said that it is unfair to pass this Amendment, because by doing so you place people who were vigilant to protect their rights in a better position than those persons who rested upon a statement in Parliament and were too lazy to do anything, or too trustful. The majority of this House consists of private Members, although scattered about our benches there are eminent Ministers and ex-Ministers, and it will be a very evil day for the legislation of this House if it is to be thought that any Minister or any Government, however eminent or however strongly they may be entrenched, can treat this House as a mere registering authority: a House which is bound to pass any Act of Parliament which the Minister may choose to recommend. It is not a fact, and I sincerely hope it will never be a fact. There is a world of difference between the statement of a Minister given in absolute good faith—no one questions that—and an Act of Parliament. A man applying ordinary common sense and with a knowledge of the law of England is not entitled to allow time to slip by or to allow time to rip, if I may use the expression, and then to claim to be put in as good a position as those who took active steps to assert their rights.
We are dealing with a comparatively small sum of money, but we are dealing with what is a fundamental and vital principle, a principle which it may be very important, I say this advisedly, to bear in mind in years to come. The
Courts have pronounced a decision. I am not concerned with the merits of the case. I rather agree with the late President of the Board of Trade, who said on a previous occasion that there was not much to be said about the merits of the case. I have no doubt that these shipowners were doing very well. The vital principle is that the Courts have pronounced their decision, and they have in one case adjudged that £34,000 is due to the litigant, and he has judgment for that amount. The Attorney-General, in the case of Carr v. Bride, in the last House of Commons, asked the then Attorney-General whether there was any precedent for what was being done, and I now ask him, in turn, what precedent he finds for this House passing an Act of Parliament to reverse a judgment which has already been given in favour of a litigant? I believe that he may search for a long time without finding any precedent. It would be a most evil day if this House interfered in this way when judgment has been given. I therefore support the Amendment. It deals with a sum the face value of which is £500,000, but anyone who knows anything about litigation knows that the face value is generally a good deal higher than the actual value. We are dealing with a question of vital principle, which concerns Members in all parts of the House. It is not a party question, and I hope the House will take its stand and will see to it that this most unfortunate precedent which is being set up in this case is not allowed to stand.

Mr. REMER: I join with other hon. Members in expressing the misgiving which one feels as to the position which the Government have taken up on this question. The Attorney-General has based his claim, as far as I can understand, upon a pledge which was given by the present Leader of the Opposition when he was President of the Board of Trade. He based his argument on the fact that the Government of that day had a very large majority and that they could carry anything. I happened to be in that Parliament, and I know that there was probably no Government that ever existed where there was more independence of thought among the supporters of the Government. Continually, Debates came forward in which the view of the Government was not accepted, and they had either to withdraw or they were
defeated, as happened on several occasions. Although I was a supporter of the Government, I voted over 100 times against that Government. Such a position would not be possible in this House of Commons or in the last House of Commons.
I am not going to enter into legal arguments with the Attorney-General, because I am not a lawyer; I approach this question from the point of view of the ordinary business man. Amongst the business community there is a great deal of misgiving as to the way that Governments treat traders. During the War Orders in Council were issued nearly every five minutes on all sorts of subjects. The Ministry of Food issued frequent Orders which were so complex that no business man could understand them. The action which the Government is taking is not fair to business men. There are many business men who have not the pluck to start actions at law. There are many business men who, like myself, would run miles in order to avoid a law action, and they will always pay through the nose to avoid one. Business men want to avoid litigation as far as possible. As to the amount which has been mentioned by the Attorney-General, it does not frighten me in the least. I do not care whether it is £18,000,000 or eighteen-pence. There seems to be a very serious question of policy involved. I approach the matter from the point of view of people having their just rights given to them. Once an action has been started I do not think that it is within the province of this House to interfere. I hope this matter will be pressed to a Division, and I shall have no hesitation in going into the Lobby in favour of the Amendment. This is not the only time that the present Government have taken up the attitude of adopting retrospective legislation. They have done it in the Finance Bill, and as a matter of principle I object to it.

Mr. HARNEY: I have no connection with litigation on this subject. This is a subject which has nothing whatever to do with party. Such view as I have formed has been dictated solely because it seems to be a just and fair one. The Bill as it stands differs from the Amendment only as to the period of time. During the War, the Government made what are now admittedly illegal exactions. In respect of those exactions certain legal claims
arose. In the ordinary course these claims would have crystallised into something payable by the Government. Other wrongs were committed during the War. Officials of the Government made many mistakes, as was inevitable, and in 1920 an Indemnity Act was passed which said, "In respect of wrongs which you in your hurry have committed during the War, you, the officials, shall not be mulcted in damages, but the person who has suffered a wrong shall obtain compensation." That Act said that where an official by neglect or omission had caused damage to the subject, the subject should not suffer nor should the official suffer, but that the Government should pay compensation. That was fair. A period had to be fixed. You could not keep open for all time this right of compensation that was given by the Indemnity Act and, therefore, it was said, expressly, "though we now substitute for your action in a court of law your right to compensation, we fix a period, and if you do not bestir yourself within that period your claim goes." The period fixed was 12 months after the expiration of the War. That was before August, 1922.
Wherever the subject had a claim by reason of a mistake made by an official during the War, he was entitled to obtain compensation provided he bestirred himself before August, 1922. I want to know why we are to draw a distinction between a subject having a claim because of the error of an official, and a subject having a claim because of the error of the Government itself. The Amendment simply says that the same right that the Indemnity Act gave to the individual who suffered wrong by the mistake of an official shall also be given to the individual who has suffered wrong by the mistake of the Government, and the period shall be up to August, 1922. That seems to me to be common justice. The Attorney-General has made use of an argument that fell familiarly upon my ears, because I happened to be in the last Parliament when, on the Increase of Rent Act, the Attorney-General then said, "We are not depriving these tenants of such rights as they have, except after a period when they ought to have known that they had no rights." I asked, "Why ought they to have known that they had no rights?" The answer was, "Because Mr. Bonar Law said so."
It is certainly a startling proposition to be told that I, who have rights by law, as these men have, which rights can only be taken from me by an Act of Parliament, am to be treated as though I lost my rights long before the Act of Parliament, and from a date when a gentleman, who might or might not be Prime Ministers, says, "When we are in power we will bring in an Act of Parliament, and we shall have a majority and that majority will carry that Act through; therefore you can take it that what is being done to-day was done in March, 1922, because Mr. Baldwin is said to have said that he would do it then." It is a monstrous proposition. I know that it is a bit of fiction, and for Heaven's sake let us keep it a pious fiction, that we are supposed to assemble in this Parliament, this talking House, this discussing House, because our arguments are assumed to have some weight. It is not to be supposed that the head of the Government registers a conclusion and then, putting the cart before the horse, we are to come into the House and fire off our arguments long after the conclusion has been come to.
We must proceed—it is only in accordance with our own dignity—as if no change in the law has taken place until the Act of Parliament has obtained the Royal Assent, and if we depart from that and substitute the declaration of a Minister, made months before, as to what he will do, then it will lead to very serious difficulties. When I made a few observations on this subject the other night, the President of the Board of Trade said in effect, "All the heroics of the hon. Member for South Shields are beside the mark because he declaims against retrospective legislation, and what we are doing is only validating the illegal act of the Government from the date when persons knew that it was illegal." Is that so? Years before this Bill, before the declaration of the Government, even before the Indemnity Bill, some of these illegal exactions had been made. From the moment they were made and existed, in the person from whom they were taken there was a right crystallising into a debt due by the Government. This Bill is then produced, saying: "Mr. Subjects, The rights that you had three or four years ago are swept completely away," and for anyone to say that that is not retrospective legislation is to talk nonsense.
The Indemnity Act recognised that great allowance must be made for errors committed by officials and heads of Departments in the hurry and confusion of war, but the Indemnity Act recognised also that it is not right, because you excuse the person who makes the fault, to punish the person who suffers the loss, and, therefore, it says, "We will not wipe out the compensation that flows from the fault, but we will transfer the burden from the official to the Government," and it says, "Any person who is lucky enough to find himself now with a claim arising out of an error made by an official has its compensation." But an unfortunate person who has a claim arising out of the fault of the whole Government is to have no claim. Can anyone justify such a distinction? And all that the Amendment of the hon. Member for Ealing says is: "You have told us you are going to wipe out these claims, and the fair thing to do is to put these persons in exactly the same position as you put those who are claimants by reason of the errors of officials." Put the wrong done by the Government on exactly the same footing as the wrong done by officials and let no claims exist in respect of either wrong unless they were made before August, 1922.

Mr. ROYLE: Amid all the legal arguments which we have heard it is difficult for a mere layman to comprehend the real position, and I would like your ruling as to whether it would be permissible for me to extend the scope of this Amendment to a later date, in view of the fact that we have heard, I think from the Attorney-General, this afternoon that a decision on the matter was given in one of our Courts. I say this because there are other claimants in connection with this matter as well as those who might come under the date mentioned in the Amendment. Personally I want to say emphatically that I am not so much concerned about the £18,000,000 that may be involved in the total, but I am concerned that as a country we shall do the right thing, whatever it costs, and the principle which I have in mind arises from the fact that there is a number of people who have taken a certain course at law in connection with Petitions of Right down to dates in 1923, and I am convinced that these people ought to be included in any advantage that may arise even if the
Amendment be accepted. I would make an appeal that the same treatment should be extended to everybody concerned regardless of what it may cost.

Mr. L. JONES: Will the Government not consider putting into the Bill the date 31st August, 1922, as the last date on which claims can be considered, to give legal effect to the decision of the High Court? That will get out of the legal difficulty in this case. The other point is as to the total of the claims made. The largest claim is that of McAndrews for £223,000, and I believe that that claim is barred out. I would be glad if the right hon. Gentleman would tell us that.

The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Webb): In spite of the ingenuity displayed in endeavouring to put a new face on the discussion, we are going over and over again the ground which we have already gone over on three successive occasions. The suggestion to introduce into the Bill the date fixed under the Indemnity Act, and to confine the operation of the Bill to claims made after that date, would knock the stuffing out of the Bill.

Mr. HARNEY: Of course.

Mr. WEBB: That means that the decision of the House in voting for the Second Reading of the Bill and for the Money Resolution and the Report of the Money Resolution will be rendered null and void.

Mr. L. JONES: The right hon. Gentleman does not wish to misrepresent us. Under the Bill, with the Amendment put in, all the claims for the £18,500,000 would be barred out, and there would be no possibility of the fears of the Attorney-General being realised. There is less than £200,000 at stake in this matter.

Mr. WEBB: I would ask the Committee to come to grips with this question. I will try to answer some of the fresh criticisms on this point. The reason why we have to take up this Bill, which is no child of ours, is simply in pursuance of our duty as a Government to protect the taxpayer against having to pay these sums. The suggestion now made is that there is no liability for claims made after the date of the Indemnity Act. It is now said that, if we accept the Amendment,
we do debar these claims. I will come back to that, but may I ask, Is not that retrospective legislation? Is not that wiping out all the potential claims for £18,000,000? Hon. Members are proposing to make the Measure retrospective so far as these claims are concerned.

Mr. HARNEY: We are proposing to limit the retrospectiveness by making the Bill less retrospective.

Mr. WEBB: I will now recall the words which I used when I referred to the hon. Member's heroics. I think now that that word was not happily chosen in view of the fact that the hon. Member is now giving away thirty-five-thirty-sixths of the claims, but he is making a final rally on the narrow edge of the half-dozen claims which are regarded as sacrosanct. Why are these people being given preference over the large number whose claims amount to £18,000,000? The hon. Member says that it is because the owners were vigilant and proceedings were instituted before the date fixed by the Act of Indemnity expired, and that is why he invites us to do what is a very arbitrary act by making this distinction. I want to suggest why the Committee must not do that arbitrary act and make the distinction between these half-a-dozen claims and the others. Of all the people who paid these charges under protest, out of the large profits which they were permitted to make, a half-dozen shipowners have gone back on their bargain and, sticking to the profits which they made, have now claimed that they should be repaid the 15 per cent. which they willingly paid and which they clamoured to be allowed to pay.

Mr. REMER: Is it not a fact that some of the shipping firms are actually in liquidation?

8.0 P.M.

Mr. WEBB: My hon. Friend knows perfectly well—much more intimately from experience than I know—that it is quite possible for a person, or firm, to make very considerable profits, and then to go into liquidation. What evidence is it that enormous profits were not made out of this transaction, that a firm is in liquidation? The point is this: these people went back on their bargain because they thought they could get back their 15 per
cent. The other shipowners did not go back on their bargain. In regard to the case of the brewery firm, there were dozens of brewery firms who were given this special permit to brew over and above the normal quantity of beer for the public convenience and their own exceeding profit. They have all accepted the situation. This one firm alone puts in a claim to have its money back. There is no question of going into liquidation. They made this huge profit. If you are going to have equity, you cannot afford to do this very great wrong, which hon. Members propose to do by retrospective legislation, to all the firms who have not gone back on their bargain. If the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Remer) is prepared to throw £400,000 away—which is the amount involved—I am not prepared to do so. But that is not all. We could not in justice refuse to consider the cases of those people who have abstained from suing the Government merely out of faith in the Government's pledge, if we now go back on our pledge, and admit the claim of these half-dozen firms.

Mr. HARNEY: How do you know what their action was?

Mr. WEBB: Their action followed on the pledge.

Mr. HARNEY: Does the right hon. Gentleman mean to put the argument to the Committee, that if one Act follows on another, the second Act is a consequence of the first?

Mr. WEBB: I said nothing of the kind. I do not propose to give way again to the hon. Member. All I said was that a pledge had been given, and following that the firms did not sue the Crown. That fact cannot be denied. If you go into it closely, you will find that there were communications between some of these firms and the Crown, and we are bound in equity to consider the case of these firms if the House decides that this Bill cannot go through. The action of the Coalition Government was taken up and ratified by the Government that succeeded the Coalition Government, and now—I do not say it does any great credit to us—it has been taken up, and ratified by the present Government. And I venture to say that any Government that may come in, when it goes into the question, must bring in this sort of legislation. I have
really nothing further to say. This Bill has been worn threadbare. While, on the one hand, the character of the people concerned is not the point, we are entitled to say that those who seek the benefit of the law must at any rate come into Court with clean hands, and equity. These people have gone back on their bargains, and their conduct has not been such as to entitle them to greater consideration than other people, who have not acted in that way, receive. I put it as mildly as I can. I would beg the Committee, therefore, to let us now dispose of this

Amendment. We must go on with the Bill. We cannot give it up.

Mr. L. JONES: May I point out that I am not asking for equity in this matter. We are asking for law. I am not a lawyer. I am asking that the law may take its course. It is the right hon. Gentleman who talks about equity and proceeds to do wrong.

Question put, "That those words be there inserted."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 65; Noes, 188.

Division No. 76.]
AYES.
[8.7 p.m.


Ackroyd, T. R.
Harvey, T. E. (Dewsbury)
Raffan, P. W.


Allen, R. Wilberforce (Leicester, S.)
Hobhouse, A. L.
Raffety, F. W.


Alstead, R.
Hore-Belisha, Major Leslie
Ramage, Captain Cecil Beresford


Apsley, Lord
Jenkins, W. A. (Brecon and Radnor)
Rathbone, Hugh R.


Aske, Sir Robert William
Jones, Henry Haydn (Merioneth)
Rees, Sir Beddoe


Berkeley, Captain Reginald
Jowitt, W. A. (The Hartlepools)
Remer, J. R.


Birkett, W. N.
Laverack, F. J.
Royle, C.


Bramsdon, Sir Thomas
Lessing, E.
Samuel, Samuel (W'dsworth, Putney)


Bull, Rt. Hon. Sir William James
Lloyd, Cyril E. (Dudley)
Seely, H. M. (Norfolk, Eastern)


Burnie, Major J. (Bootle)
McCrae, Sir George
Simpson, J. Hope


Cassels, J. D.
Maden, H.
Stranger, Innes Harold


Cowan, D. M. (Scottish Universities)
Mansel, Sir Courtenay
Sutherland, Rt. Hon. Sir William


Darbishire, C. W.
Marks, Sir George Croydon
Thompson, Piers G. (Torquay)


Davies, Ellis (Denbigh, Denbigh)
Millar, J. D.
Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton, E.)


Dickie, Captain J. P.
Morse, W. E.
Thornton, Maxwell R.


Dixey, A. C.
Moulton, Major Fletcher
Vivian, H.


Duckworth, John
Oliver, P. M. (Manchester, Blackley)
Williams, Col. P. (Middlesbrough, E.)


Dudgeon, Major C. R.
Owen, Major G.
Wise, Sir Fredric


Emlyn-Jones, J. E. (Dorset, N.)
Parry, Thomas Henry
Wood, Major M. M. (Aberdeen, C.)


Finney, V. H.
Pattinson, S. (Horncastle)



Fletcher, Lieut.-Com. R. T. H.
Phillipps, Vivian
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—


Franklin, L. B.
Pilkington, R. R.
Mr. Harney and Mr. Leif Jones.


Gorman, William
Pringle, W. M. R.



NOES.


Acland, Rt. Hon. Francis Dyke
Costello, L. W. J.
Guest, J. (York, Hemsworth)


Adamson, Rt. Hon. William
Cove, W. G.
Hacking, Captain Douglas H.


Adamson, W. M. (Staff., Cannock)
Cowan, Sir Wm. Henry (Islington, N.)
Hall, F. (York, W. R., Normanton)


Agg-Gardner, Rt. Hon. Sir James T.
Craik, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry
Hall, G. H. (Merthyr Tydvil)


Alden, Percy
Crittall, V. G.
Hannon, Patrick Joseph Henry


Alexander, A. V. (Sheffield, Hillsbro')
Crooke, J. Smedley (Deritend)
Harbord, Arthur


Ayles, W. H.
Davidson, Major-General Sir J. H.
Hartington, Marquess of


Baker, Walter
Davies, Sir Thomas (Cirencester)
Hartshorn, Rt. Hon. Vernon


Banton, G.
Davison, J. E. (Smethwick)
Hastings, Sir Patrick


Barker, G. (Monmouth, Abertlliery)
Dickson, T.
Hastings, Somerville (Reading)


Barnes, A.
Doyle, Sir N. Grattan
Haycock, A. W.


Barnett, Major Richard W.
Dukes, C.
Hayday, Arthur


Barnston, Major Sir Harry
Duncan, C.
Henderson, A. (Cardiff, South)


Batey, Joseph
Dunnico, H.
Henderson, T. (Glasgow)


Benn, Sir A. S. (Plymouth, Drake)
Edwards, C. (Monmouth, Bedwellty)
Henderson, W. W. (Middlesex, Enfld.)


Berry, Sir George
Edwards, G. (Norfolk, Southern)
Henn, Sir Sydney H.


Black, J. W.
Egan, W. H.
Hennessy, Major J. R. G.


Blundell, F. N.
Eyres-Monsell, Com. Rt. Hon. B. M.
Hillary, A. E.


Bondfield, Margaret
Forestier-Walker, L.
Hirst, G. H.


Bowyer, Capt. G. E. W.
Fremantle, Lieut.-Colonel Francis E.
Hoffman, P. C.


Brittain, Sir Harry
Gardner, B. W. (West Ham, Upton)
Hope, Rt. Hon. J. F. (Sheffield, C.)


Broad, F. A.
Gardner, J. P. (Hammersmith, North)
Hopkinson, A. (Lancaster, Mossley)


Bromfield, William
Gavan-Duffy, Thomas
Horlick, Lieut.-Colonel J. N.


Buckingham, Sir H.
Gillett, George M.
Isaacs, G. A.


Buckie, J.
Gosling, Harry
Jackson, R. F. (Ipswich)


Burman, J. B.
Gould, Frederick (Somerset, Frome)
James, Lieut.-Colonel Hon. Cuthbert


Butler, Sir Geoffrey
Graham, D. M. (Lanark, Hamilton)
Jenkins, W. (Glamorgan, Neath)


Buxton, Rt. Hon. Noel
Graham, W. (Edinburgh, Central)
John, William (Rhondda, West)


Cape, Thomas
Greene, W. P. Crawford
Johnston, Thomas (Stirling)


Charleton, H. C.
Greenall, T.
Jones, T. I. Mardy (Pontypridd)


Church, Major A. G.
Greenwood, A. (Nelson and Colne)
Jowett, Rt. Hon. F. W. (Bradford, E.)


Clarke, A.
Greenwood, William (Stockport)
Kennedy, T.


Cobb, Sir Cyril
Grenfell, D. R. (Glamorgan)
Kindersley, Major G. M.


Compton, Joseph
Groves, T.
King, Captain Henry Douglas


Cope, Major William
Grundy, T. W.
Lamb, J. Q.


Lansbury, George
Nixon, H.
Sutton, J. E.


Law, A.
O'Grady, Captain James
Thomson, Sir W. Mitchell-(Croydon, S.)


Lawrence, Susan (East Ham, North)
Parkinson, John Allen (Wigan)
Thurtle, E.


Lawson, John James
Pease, William Edwin
Tillett, Benjamin


Leach, W.
Perkins, Colonel E. K.
Tinker, John Joseph


Lee, F.
Perring, William George
Toole, J.


Lindley, F. W.
Ponsonby, Arthur
Tout, W. J.


Lloyd-Greame, Rt. Hon. Sir Philip
Potts, John S.
Turner, Ben


Lorimer, H. D.
Purcell, A. A.
Varley, Frank B.


Loverseed, J. F.
Richardson, R. (Houghton-le-Spring)
Wallhead, Richard C.


Lowth, T.
Ritson, J.
Warne, G. H.


MacDonald, Rt. Hon. J. R. (Aberavon)
Robinson, S. W. (Essex, Chelmstord)
Watson, W. M. (Dunfermline)


MacDonald, R.
Ropner, Major L.
Watts-Morgan, Lt.-Col. D. (Rhondda)


McEntee, V. L.
Roundell, Colonel R. F.
Webb, Rt. Hon. Sidney


Maclean, Neil (Glasgow, Govan)
Royce, William Stapleton
Weir, L. M.


March, S.
Russell-Wells, Sir S. (London Univ.)
Welsh, J. C.


Marley, James
Samuel, H. Walter (Swansea, West)
Whiteley, W.


Martin, W. H. (Dumbarton)
Scott, Sir Leslie (Liverp'l, Exchange)
Wignall, James


Middleton, G.
Shepperson, E. W.
Williams, Lt.-Col. T. S. B. (Kennington)


Mills, J. E.
Sherwood, George Henry
Wilson, Sir C. H. (Leeds, Central)


Mitchell, W. F. (Saffron Walden)
Shinwell, Emanuel
Wilson, C. H. (Sheffield, Attercliffe)


Montague, Frederick
Smith, Ben (Bermondsey, Rotherhithe)
Wilson, R. J. (Jarrow)


Morel, E. D.
Snell, Harry
Windsor, Walter


Muir, John W.
Spence, R.
Wright, W.


Murray, Robert
Stamford, T. W.
Yerburgh, Major Robert D. T.


Nall, Lieut.-Colonel Sir Joseph
Stewart, J. (St. Rollox)



Naylor, T. E.
Sueter, Rear-Admiral Murray Fraser
TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—


Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. L. (Exeter)
Sullivan, J.
Mr. Spoor and Mr. John Robertson.


Nicholson, O. (Westminster)




Question, "That the Schedule stand part of the Bill," put, and agreed to.

The CHAIRMAN: I think the next Amendment on the Paper in the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Camborne (Mr. Leif Jones) is practically the same question. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman wishes to move it?

Mr. JONES: It refers to practically the same question, and I do not move it.

It being a Quarter past Eight of the Clock, further Proceeding was postponed, without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 4.

Orders of the Day — EXPORT TRADE.

Sir A. SHIRLEY BENN: I beg to move,
That a committee be appointed to consider the position of our export trade and the means to be taken to obtain the necessary markets; that the committee shall consist of a judge of the High Court as chairman and six Members of the House of Commons, two of whom to be nominated by the Government, two by the Conservative party, and two by the Liberal party; that three of the Members shall be Cabinet or ex-Cabinet Ministers and the other three shall possess business or trade qualifications; and that the committee be requested to report to the House prior to the Summer Recess.
I would ask my fellow Members on this occasion to divest themselves of all party feeling and to examine the position in the light of present circumstances, and to consider what steps can be taken to meet a crying danger. I hope that they
will recognise that the dogmas of the 18th century and the dogmas of the 19th century can have but little bearing upon the position of to-day. Our population is over 40,000,000. In England we have 649 people per square mile, and in Scotland 164 per square mile. Great Britain cannot produce either the food for her people or the raw material on which they can work. We have to buy enormous quantities abroad and to import them. In 1922 we paid £470,000,000 for food, tobacco and drink, and we paid nearly £300,000,000 for the raw materials for our factories. In addition, we purchased manufactured goods to the extent of over £560,000,000. [HON MEMBERS: "NO!"] I can give you the Board of Trade figures, which are in my pocket. We paid for these imports by the sale of over £750,000,000 of manufactured goods, coal and raw material, by the work we did for people in other countries, such as shipping, banking and insurance, and by the use of the interest on accrued capital. We cannot produce one quarter of our foodstuff and we have to buy abroad. We must sell our manufactured goods and work for other people in order to pay for the imports. The time is fast approaching when we must either make fresh arrangements for dealing with the export of our manufactured goods or we must weaken our country by excessive emigration.
My fear for the export business is based largely upon the fact that many
countries in Europe are no longer in a position to pay for the goods which they require, unless they can find markets in which to sell the goods which they themselves manufacture. But almost every country in Europe can manufacture as cheaply as we can. With education, with modern machinery that is doing away with the skill of the handworker, with rapid transportation, with telegraphy and wireless, there is little reason why one country should manufacture more cheaply than any other civilised country. The great markets for manufactured goods in the future must be found largely, I believe, in the Eastern hemisphere, where the hot sun is inclined to produce a disinclination for labour, save that needed to encourage Nature to produce her own fruits, which can be shipped in payment for the manufactured goods produced in more temperate climates. I would like to deal with three or four of our biggest exports in the past. Take coal, for instance. It now costs 75 per cent. more than it cost before the War, and, in addition, you have a high cost of transport. No-one can claim, considering the cost of living, that the wage either of the miner or of the sailor is commensurate with the value of their work. In addition, in some countries coal is not needed as much as in olden days. We have now electricity produced by water power, not only on the American continent, but in Italy, where the demand for coal is not nearly as great as it once was. Other countries are going ahead with electricity. Then we have liquid fuel and natural gas in some countries, and these may become a factor in manufactures.
Take cotton goods. We all realise that our exports in olden days consisted very largely of cotton and woollen goods. I was reading not long ago the statistics for 1828, 1829 and 1830, and I discovered that our total exports of produce and manufactured goods made in England amounted to £35,000,000 to £36,000,000, and that only £22,000,000 consisted of cotton and woollen goods. We have always been accustomed to rely on the American cotton crop for our raw material, but those of us who know something about the cotton crops in America fully believe that it is almost impossible to get larger crops than from 10,000,000 to 12,000,000 bales per annum; unless there is some new method of picking adopted we cannot count upon
getting more than 10,000,000 to 12,000,000 bales from America. America is using large quantities of cotton herself, and she is bound to go on using more, and the day is not far distant when America will use the whole of her crop and ship manufactured goods instead of the raw material. Unless we can arrange to obtain our cotton in sufficient quantities at reasonable prices, the outlook for our cotton exports is uncommonly bad. In the Empire there are places like Pondoland and Rhodesia, to say nothing of the Sudan and other places, in which experts agree that illimitable quantities of cotton can be produced and picked and exported. I know this question is being studied and that work is being done in connection with it, but the call of our manufacturers and workers is so strong that we ought to make a point that nothing is left undone to ensure our getting the cotton we require. As to wool, there is nothing to prevent the various portions of the Empire from selling both wool and rubber to foreign countries and allowing them to use it for their own factories, unless some arrangement can be made between the component parts of the Empire.
Let me say a word about our shipping, because our export business depends very largely on our shipping. We can still expect to make profits out of it, but we must not overlook the fact that America is determined to have a big merchant fleet of her own, and if by any chance the flag discrimination contained in the Jones Bill is adopted, there is no doubt that many of the cargoes that our ships have been accustomed to carry will not be forthcoming. One of the greatest troubles of the shipping world is that so many ships have been built in the past few years. We have to-day some 667,000 tons of British shipping lying idle for which there is no employment and many charters are made to-day at rates which are not profitable. We can only hope that confidence will be restored in Europe at an early date, that European markets may be revived and remunerative international trade again carried on.
Europe, however, cannot provide the food and the raw materials for which we have to pay in cash. The cash as we know is obtained by the sale of our manufactured goods, by the interest on our investments and by services rendered. I am heartily in favour of doing everything
in our power to help the reconstruction of European trade, but prices in Europe may be too low to permit of a living wage being paid to the British worker who manufactures the goods. I believe the time has come when we should try to find new markets to add to the old markets. I believe they can be found. May I remind the House briefly of how our trade was built up, because, looking at the circumstances to-day, we should realise the vicissitudes through which we have passed. Until the time of Queen Elizabeth we were a pastoral country; we were not colonising then to any extent. Holland, Portugal, Spain had gone ahead with their colonies, but it was not until Spain with wealth collected from the East built the Armada and tried to conquer England that we were roused up and went in for colonising. We built up markets throughout the world and carried on a fair trade. Hegel, the great German philosopher, wrote of England:
The material existence of England is based on commerce and industry and the English have undertaken the weighty responsibility of being missionaries of civilisation to the world for their commercial spirit urges them to traverse every sea and land, and to form connections with barbarous peoples, to create wants and stimulate industry and, first and foremost, to establish among them the condition necessary to commerce, namely, the relinquishment of a life of violence, respect for property, civility to strangers.
Then came the European wars of the 18th century, followed by the Napoleonic Wars. England was the only great country which was not invaded and devastated. She progressed in her manufacturing, owing to the enterprise and energy of our merchants and manufacturers and the brains and ingenuity of men like Arkwright, Cartwright, Hargreaves, Watt, Stephenson, and men like them, who revolutionised the methods of manufacture and the means of transport. When the wars were over, we found ourselves in a position to supply the devastated countries with manufactured goods. We had, however, great distress among the working classes in England—greater than to-day—and very low wages. I think it was due to the belief that if the import taxes on food were taken off there would be a reduction in the cost of living and a cheaper cost of production, that the so-called Free Trade we have had for some years was brought
about. It was then that our merchants and manufacturers felt that the Colonial markets were useless, because trade was then carried on by means of sailing ships. There were neither cables nor a fast letter post, and long periods had to elapse before any returns could come in from the cargoes that were shipped. It meant that money used in that way was only turned over once, while money used in European business could be turned over two or three times. I desire that this should be neither a Protectionist speech nor a Free Trade speech. As far as I can, I will steer clear of both. I would point out, however, that it was only when the European market came along—and it was a good market—that our merchants and manufacturers thought it was not necessary to keep up the Colonial markets. It was then that Cobden used the celebrated words:
The colonial system with all its dazzling appeals to the passions of the people can never be got rid of except by the indirect process of Free Trade which will gradually weaken the ties which unite the Colonies to us through a mistaken idea of self-interest.
We want all the European trade we can get. Undoubtedly we made money out of it, and good money, and there are many rich men who can truthfully say that their family fortunes were founded in those days. To-day, however, I am sure the House will agree with me when I say the European markets are not promising, and it seems to me that the time has come when to carry on a proper export business we should strive urgently to get other markets to add to the old markets. I am asking that a Committee shall be appointed to look into this matter, and I am sure hon. Members realise the sort of Committee which I have in mind. I suggest there should be a Judge of the High Court as Chairman and six Members of the House of Commons, two nominated by the Government, two by the Conservative party, and two by the Liberal party. Three of the members, I suggest, should be Cabinet Ministers or ex-Cabinet Ministers, and the other three should possess business or trade qualifications. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] I can tell hon. Members why. I want this Committee when it reports to the country to have behind its Report men who are entirely regardless of their political labels, men who are known to the country as good servants of the State.
I hope the Committee will not look at the matter from any party standpoint, but will go into the question to see what can be done to increase our export business. If the Committee is appointed—and I trust the President of the Board of Trade will see his way to recommend it—I hope their meetings will be held in public and that the evidence will be given before the public, so that the people of England may know our exact position. We all acknowledge that our country has been through a very hard time. It has had a vast load to carry, but we are not beaten. We have been through many serious times before, and I recall what Emerson said about us after the Crimean War:
I see her, not dispirited, not weak, well remembering that she has seen dark days before—indeed with a kind of instinct that she always sees a little better on a cloudy day, and that in storm of battle and calamity she has a secret vigour and a pulse like cannon. I see her in her old age, not decrepit, but still young, still daring to believe in her power of endurance and expansion, and seeing this, I say: 'All hail.'
That is what an American said about us after the Crimean War, when we were going through hard days. To-day we are going through them, but if our country will only recollect her great past, her power in forcing forward civilisation and in keeping peace, if she will only recollect that she has in the Empire a great body of civilised people who want to see peace maintained and commerce pursued, and if we can get a committee that will go into this question and report to this House the beet steps to take in order to produce the desired markets, I believe it will be good for us.

Sir G. CROYDON MARKS: I beg to second the Motion.
I do so, perhaps, from entirely different motives from those which have prompted my hon. Friend the Member for the Drake Division of Plymouth (Sir A. S. Benn) in moving it, and in order that there may be no suggestion in this House that there is a monopoly in any one party of the desire to advance what may make for the prosperity of this country. While there is no monopoly in patriotism, neither is there any monopoly in the desire for the well-being of the whole of this country, and I hope it is not to be taken as evidence of the interest of the party opposite that the benches there have been so sparsely attended this evening to support my hon. Friend. I am supporting
this Motion in the belief that everyone recognises to-day that anything that can be done to exploit the possibilities of new markets should be done, and if it is to be done by any one political organisation, no matter how good the intentions may be or how well conducted the inquiry may be, whatever the result, it will be tainted and there will be suspicion attached to it. Therefore, when the proposal is made that there shall be an investigation devoid of any kind of political bias or political colour, I, as a free trader, stand here and co-operate In that proposal. While my hon. Friend has made the suggestion that the industries of this country can be traced, I am not going to be diverted from what, perhaps, is the proper spirit in seconding a non-political Motion to state what, in my opinion, has contributed to the great success and the material well-being of this country. Otherwise, we might immediately be at cross purposes in reference to that which brought the results about.
We are faced to-day with a desire on every hand for more work. It is useless to make suggestions for insurance in connection with every kind of employment, and with all the risks associated with industry, unless, at the same time, we devote our energies towards the extension of the means for employment as well as covering the risks of that employment. Thus, to-day I welcome any kind of inquiry which will go forward with the imprimatur of this House, without a bias, but with the one desire to see if it be possible to recommend to this House steps that may be taken for the extension of confidence, the development of credits, and the furtherance of co-operation between ail those engaged in industry. There are three things needed in connection with industry to-day. We must have cheap raw materials, we must have the most efficient labour, and we must have the most economical transport connected with the things that we produce. If we have those things, it will be idle to suggest that it is in the interests of any one class or section concerned with industry to promote it. It is in the interests of all. We are all mutually dependent one upon the other. We have been taunted in times past with being a nation of shopkeepers, but we are not a nation of shopkeepers simply selling goods one to the other. We are a nation
of shopkeepers for supplying goods to the world, and we can continue in that proud position if we are alert, in the other parts of the world, for the development of markets which are available to us, if we can only extend in peace what we extended in war.
During the War, we went to the help of nations and advanced huge sums of money that we shall never see again. If we advanced those huge sums of money in reference to that which was war, surely we can be advancing money in reference to that which is industry, for the building up of peace as well as for destruction in war, and I am hopeful that the inquiry that may be instituted may show that it will be possible for international credits to be extended in connection with those who want our goods, because we have to remember that there are six years of arrears in reference to manufactures which we can produce better than any other nation in the world, but the people are unable to buy them. If we could extend the credits, give them sufficient time, lay hold of those means of inducing them to believe that they can obtain the goods and pay afterwards, with the credit of the manufacturers who produce the goods, then we shall be advancing some kind of result which, without Government support, cannot possibly be expected. Time was when we in this country supplied the whole civilised world with power. Boulton and Watt established in this country that which every civilised monarch in the world in those days came here to see. Foreign monarchs visited the Soho works, Birmingham, for the purpose of finding out what was going to revolutionise industry by the cheap mechanical power then obtainable. Later on, we developed, in connection with our mills and in our looms, further processes, which also enabled us to supply the world with that which they could not produce themselves. To-day, one living man, Sir Charles Parsons, has supplied, and is supplying, the world with the cheapest kind of mechanical power known since the day of James Watt. We are doing that, and we are never afraid of competition in reference to that which relates to the engineering and the mechanical skill of this country, and while that is so, it certainly means that the markets that are available can be supplied by our men to-day exactly as they were supplied in the past.
While the time has gone by when they needed to come to us for all these things, we have built up rivals by sending our own skilled men into those countries which produce to-day that which they previously bought from us. We have cultivated our own rivals, we have educated the world industrially, we have educated the whole civilised world mechanically, and, while that has been done, it is idle to-day to say that we have no energy available for going further afield and finding what else may be done for the benefit of those who to-day have doles rather than ample wages. I am an engineer, and I am proud of the race to which I belong, proud of the possibilities that English engineering has always shown. We have the best mechanics in the whole world. I know America well, I have been there regularly for the last 27 years, so that I know something of that about which I am talking. The mechanics of America cannot touch the mechanics of England. The skill we have cannot be found there. They are too mechanically trained; they are too much dragooned; they are too much machined, and too much limited in what they do. With the possibilities we have here, I ask the House not to look upon this as a question which belongs to this side, or that side, or the other side. It belongs to us all, and we have got to go out to meet it.
While it may seem strange to some of my hon. Friends that I should be seconding a Motion which is submitted by one who has made himself distinguished in a matter on which I shall fight him as long as I live, he is not proposing it from the point of view of the old standpoints and old errors which have so blinded his eyes in the past, and I am seconding it in the belief that all that has been proposed in the past by one party or another will fail if it is to be linked up to the prejudices, to the passions, to the bitter disappointments of one side and the other, due to the disbelief each has in the motives of the other. Therefore, I am asking that we shall, for once, divest ourseves of this prejudice of one side against the other, and that we shall all co-operate, if possible, to produce a result that will bring employment. It is no use to talk about more insurance; it is no use to advocate greater security, unless we are going to fill our workshops with new work. During the War, it was my good fortune, associated with my
fellow-engineers, to ask them, and to obtain from them, the greatest co-operation in producing the cheapest and the best kind of munitions possible, by allowing only the skilled men to do skilled work, and not waste their time upon doing small and inferior work. We diluted the labour, with the good-will of all the unions concerned. On the ships on the Tyne—I was Commissioner for the Tyne, so I know what I am talking about—the lines of demarcation were broken down between the coppersmith, the boilermaker and the fitter. They were all broken down during the War, and what I am now suggesting is that if we could do that in War time, if we could make a rapid output, if now similar facilities were offered, without breaking down trade union rules or trade union skill—I am not going to belittle the trade that took me many years to acquire, and to believe that anyone can step in and do the job that took me years of experience to acquire, but there is some work I did in the first week of my apprenticeship that I could do as well as at the end of the seven years.
That being so, I am asking that there should be the same broad spirit, the same wide vision, the same open mind, the same trustworthiness, the same belief in that which is industrially manufactured, as there was in connection with that which was nationally manufactured. Break down the prejudices between the employer and the employed. Let the Employers' Federation and the men's union recognise that it is a common interest they are serving, and that there is no one thing that affects one side that does not equally affect the other. Let that be broken down, and it will be better than all the Resolutions this House can carry, and will make for greater prosperity than we have yet seen. Believing we need these markets, knowing there are markets to be obtained, knowing, too, that any inquiry by one body of men would not bring confidence, I am asking the House to throw prejudice on one side, to throw away the old antagonisms which one party may have towards the other, and let us all come together, and ask the Government to give us a lead in this, that there may be an impartial inquiry, so that it cannot be challenged because of the manner in which it has been carried out.

Major CHURCH: In rising to address the House on this all-important matter
of export trade, I should like, if I may, to traverse some of the ground which has already been covered by the hon. Mover and the hon. Seconder of the Motion. Both of them, it was obvious, were dealing with the subject of industrial research, and yet in their Motion for the appointment of this Committee, I find no recommendation that anybody having the slightest knowledge of scientific research should be appointed to the Committee. That, I think, is something which could be remedied. We are all in this House agreed, I think, that our future as a country will depend on the export of that priceless possession of the British race—its ideas. We must export ideas, even although they may have been materialised before leaving this country. The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Sir C. Marks) has referred to the pioneer work of James Watt, and I should like to remind him that both James Watt and Adam Smith were professors of the same University. While the one man supplied the world with the creative idea, which is the fountain of the industrial life, not only of this country but of the whole world, the other, by initiating an entirely different principle—the mere acquisition, and not the creation of wealth—has been responsible for a good deal of our industrial unrest for a great part of the last century. In other words, we have not only to consider this matter from the point of view of raw materials, the export of manufactured products and the sustenance of this nation, but we also have to consider the relations of finance to industry, and I should have liked to have seen, also, the recommendation that at least one representative of the big financial interests should have been upon this Committee as such.
I should like to say, also, in passing, with regard to the composition of the committee which it is suggested should be set up, that a committee already exists. It is true, it has no great powers; it is an advisory committee. Above all, it is suggested in the Motion that no such Department as the Board of Trade exists. I would like to suggest that we have a Board of Trade which has been attempting to perform for this country for many years the function which it is suggested this small committee should deal with in the space of two or three months. This is a very, very short time to review all the possibilities of the export trade of
this country, and shall I say that anything done for the export trade must depend on the internal condition of the country? I think that I should hardly favour the kind of committee that has been suggested in the Motion. I would rather favour a fuller and more intensive inquiry into the whole matter and that we should have no time limit put upon the production of their report.
The question of the supply of raw materials is, as the hon. Member for Plymouth (Sir A. Shirley Benn) has said, one which must exercise the minds of every Member of this House. But I should just like to point out to both the Mover and the Seconder that there has been in the last few years substitutes discovered for many of the raw materials which are grown naturally. One can imagine what would happen to the silk industry of this country if we had to depend on overseas for our raw silk rather than on the scientific men who have discovered the process by which artificial silk can be made. One could go through the whole of the category of the various scientific discoveries in this country during the last 100 years, which have contributed so vastly to the national wealth, and which, if rightly used, could have contributed so materially to the welfare of the whole of the people of this country. I am one of those who refuses to believe that this country is overstocked with human material. I believe that the world is not overcrowded, but is quite sparsely populated. I am one of those who believe that man is a scarce animal on the face of the earth. I believe that if only the whole earth was brought under some scientific survey by the best scientific minds of all countries, not merely of this country, and if the financiers of the world also made up their minds to get back to their proper functions, and not to command industry, but to serve it as they originally did, that that would contribute to the happiness of the world, and the country would not be faced with the necessity of piling armaments upon armaments in the, everlasting race for supremacy.
9.0 P.M.
During the last few weeks we have heard of a discovery by Mr. Grindell Matthews. It is attributed to him that he has discovered a ray with extraordinary
properties. The suggestion is that he can pass an intensive ray of electricity along a beam of light, using the beam of light as a conductor. I do not know whether he would agree with the suggestion that is made or not, but I understand he has patented his invention, and that there is some danger of the invention being taken up by another country. One is aghast at the idea whenever any invention of this kind is suggested in this country, or any other civilised country, that the first suggestion that is made by the thinkers—by the thinkers all over the world—when such a new instrument has been discovered, is not that of doing some good to the world, but that it may or should be used for destroying humanity, and destroying the best of humanity. All the way through one will find it is the same thing. The same process that will turn out poison gas will turn out the most beautiful dyes. Merely a slight change in the end of a series of processes will convert the one thing to something entirely different in its effects. Professor Soddy has rightly said that man, particularly civilised man, seems to have been using the discoveries of science which have given him such command over natural processes, not to build up the civilisation of the world and to add to its material and intellectual progress, but with the enthusiasm of a lunatic asylum to destroy and ruin it. That is essentially the case.
You have the Haber process of producing nitrogen from the air which would have supplied us with fertilisers for the whole of the world. Those fertilisers would give to us what we all require in this country—increased yield of our crops and reduced cost of production. But the first immediate purpose to which such scientific discovery was put was to supply explosives in order to blow men to bits. Something like 14,000,000 of civilised persons have either been blown to bits or rendered unfit for any further useful work for the community. We are facing now quite glibly the possibilities of a new war. So one can rejoice at the Motion which has been moved and with the sentiments expressed by the two hon. Members who have moved and seconded it. In its essence it is that we should get this exhaustive inquiry into the whole world resources.
An impartial inquiry upon the matter would have to bring in the whole of the scientific men so that they might apply their minds as to what is best in the same way as you here have them apply their science to the arts of war. When we have that, there is no question about it, that civilised man will find a way out of the present impasse, different to this ceaseless competition in the markets of the world, and will realise that there is room for all of us. I have already said that I myself am convinced that this country is not over-populated. Last week we had the melancholy spectacle of a number of adherents of a certain economic faith trying to persuade us that by the removal of certain duties which were put on for one purpose we should be entirely ruining an industry. The hon Member for North Cornwall (Sir G. Croydon Marks) tells us the following week that this country's greatness has been built upon its craftsmen: upon the intelligence and educated intelligence of its people. He tells the House that we have a tradition of craftsmanship in this country which has never been equalled the whole world over.
Only last year I spent a considerable time not only going through various universities on the Continent, but going amongst the firms that were making scientific instruments. I am interested in the subject, and in the production of scientific instruments. I remember in Vienna I went into the works of Reichardt's, the great optical manufacturers. I was examining and criticising one of the particular instruments which they produced, that is an epidiascope. In response to my observations the manager of the concern said, "It is true in that respect it is not all that it might be: it could be a much better instrument, but the trouble is that since the beginning of the War we have not been able to get your English craftsmen over here to work in our workshops, because we cannot afford to pay them the wages they want." He said that your best English craftsmen are going to America. On my return to this country I was happy to be present at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Liverpool, and I was examining there some of the scientific instruments which were being exhibited by various makers and agents.
Speaking to one of the agents I repeated to him the remark of the manager
of the firm of Reichardt's in Vienna, and he said, "Well, there is no question about it that if the British manufacturers would only be content with a smaller margin of profit, if only they would have a little more courage and be prepared to develop a market which already is in existence, there is no reason at all why the British scientific instrument should not be the peer of any scientific instrument which is being produced in the whole world." He said it is true that in reality the German scientific instrument makers base their optical industry upon the elaborate researches of Abbé, and that is where the German manufacturer has scored. I say this without regard to Free Trade or Protectionist principles. I should say that very few people are doctrinaire Free Traders now, judging from the spectacle we witnessed last week when quite a large number of Free Traders walked into the Lobby with the Protectionists.

Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE: And all the Protectionists on the opposite side went with the Free Traders.

Major CHURCH: The point I was making was that the British manufacturers will not pay the same attention to a new discovery unless they think there is an enormous fortune to be made immediately, and they have not displayed for the last 50 years the same courage in developing new industries as have been displayed by some of our foreign competitors. At the present time this country is not doing well from the point of view of scientific research, and as a matter of fact it is not really encouraging it. In 1917, during the War, a Committee of Inquiry considered the question of the application of science to the industries of this country, and eventually a Department of Scientific and Industrial Research was established to promote scientific research amongst the industries of this country. After some time a scheme was brought forward by which the Government itself was going to pay pound for pound to the manufacturers in certain industries to encourage them to take an interest in research. It was a pretty expensive experiment, as has been shown by the results of the quinquennial valuation of the work of the research associations, and why? Not that the research that has been done has not been of first-class importance; not that if it had
been done in America, or Austria or Germany it would not have commanded the respect and the attention of all the business men in those countries; it was not that at all, but merely that the British manufacturers will not take the least interest in research, with a few notable exceptions, and they are amongst the best run industries in this country, and they have not only been able to pay their workers well, but they have made a handsome margin of profits and have indulged in other schemes in South American railway companies out of the profits which they have made in this country.
The majority of the manufacturers in this country do not appreciate scientific brains, and they will not put people in control of their industries having any vast knowledge of science, and even a Government stands condemned for the type of director it has put on the British Dyestuffs Corporation which may, I hope, be remedied in the very near future. When these researches have been undertaken by the workers in the research associations most of them get pound for pound, and some get as much as £9; but in many cases firms that have only contributed £1 against the £9 contributed by the State do not want to continue to experiment and co-operate in this way, but it must be clearly understood that they cannot still proceed by their own unscientific rule-of-thumb methods and still command the markets of the world.
If there is one thing we have neglected in this country it is the application of the work that has been done. There are some people who look back to the 4½ years of war as a period of intense scientific research in this country. As a matter of fact, it was the worst period for the last 20 years from the point of view of the output of research. It was certainly the period when discoveries made in science during the previous 15 years were applied intensively for the protection of the country, and incidentally for the destruction of other countries. Some of the most extraordinary applications of science were made during the last War. It may interest hon. Members to know of one which was brought to my notice by Professor Wood, of Baltimore, last year.
We were in a difficulty with regard to submarines destroying our transport trade, and the difficulty was that the
transports, particularly convoys, wished to keep in touch with each other without showing any lights. That was very difficult, and wireless would not enable them to solve the problem. It was, however, solved by a very simple application of X-rays. In that way the convoys were able to signal to each other for a distance of some miles by a very simple application of X-rays. I do not think anybody in their senses a few years before the War would ever have imagined that X-rays could have been put to any such use, because we have always associated their use with medical treatment.
I do feel that one of the great drawbacks has been in the last few years, when the country owed a real debt of gratitude to the various scientific men who placed their services at the disposal of the State, without any hope of reward, and most of whom, since the War, have been most shabbily treated I can think of one in particular. It was by the adoption of a suggestion of his, when he was honorary adviser to the Colonial Office, that British companies were enabled to control certain raw materials in British Guiana, which are absolutely essential for certain industries in this country. His advice was taken, but quite recently he was told that the Treasury did not think they could retain his services any longer, particularly now that, since he is getting an old man, he thought they might pay him something as a retainer. We have not, as a country, applied our scientific discoveries in a way which will improve, not only our export trade, but our import trade. I have already suggested, for example, the possibility that we need not be so dependent upon oversea supplies of raw cotton. I am not suggesting that naturally-grown cotton is not the most economical source of such fibres for clothes at the present time, but I can envisage, as I expect most hon. Members can envisage, the time when we shall not need cotton plantations at all, but shall be able to synthesise fibres and make clothes from them.
One might go further and say that the time is not so very far distant when we shall be able to get, at any rate as much nourishment, if we do not get as much physical enjoyment as we do at present, from our meals, by using synthetic foods. It is a horrible thought, I agree, and it
would not give us a great deal of physical satisfaction; but the time may come when man will not need the same amount of physical satisfaction as he does at the present time. If hon. Members would read the Lord Chancellor's nephew's last book, "Daedalus," they might find there a good deal of food for thought in that direction. I need not say anything further on that, because it has not a great deal to do and, indeed, is not even remotely connected with, export trade. In a number of directions this country is dependent upon our Overseas Dominions and upon foreign countries for supplies, as raw materials, of commodities which may very well, in the near future, be made synthetically. The history of the dyestuffs industry in this country is a tragedy of lost opportunities. We have tried our utmost, in the last few years, to get back our old markets in dyes. It is true that we have succeeded in this country in producing a large number of dyes, and now the whole world can supply such quantities of dyestuffs that the world could be overstocked with them.
There is another aspect of the export trade which has not been touched upon. I do not want to enlarge upon it, but we are thinking a great deal in these days about the markets which we have, as has been said by the hon. Members who moved and seconded this Motion, inevitably lost in certain directions because the peoples concerned are themselves manufacturing on their own account, and, as they have the necessary raw materials in abundance at their very doors, we quite obviously cannot face competition of that kind. It is doubtful whether it would be a good thing for this country to attempt to compete unduly in certain natural markets, such as the Bombay market in the case of cotton goods; but there are still vast tracts in thickly populated countries where there is a tremendous avenue for our export trade, if only the populations of those countries increased their needs.
If there is one thing above all others which increases the needs of any population, it is the spread and growth of education. As man's education improves, so do his needs increase, and this fact should provide any Committee of Inquiry with food for thought. Think what a thoroughly well educated Russia would
mean from the point of view of the export trade of this country; but it will take some years for the Russian people to develop the needs that have already been developed by the people of this country. One could go on applying that to various other countries, where the standard of civilisation is a poor one, owing entirely to the want of any proper system of education. In other words, it would pay this country to spread propaganda of an essentially peaceful kind to the effect that all peoples on earth should be thoroughly well educated. It would be sound economy from this country's point of view, and would give this country's export trade, as far as one can gather, the impetus that it needs. I must say that I was intensely interested in the plea—for it really was a plea—made by the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Sir C. Marks) for the recognition of the brains of the people of this country, and for the craft traditions of the people of this country, although I cannot go quite so far as the hon. Member would like to go with regard to the dilution of labour. At the present time we have to make the best of the existing system, and, while the financial system of this country and of the whole world is on its present basis, I doubt very much whether any army of workers, in this or any other country, should fling away the one weapon that they have—the protection of their own interests.

Sir FREDRIC WISE: I am inclined to agree with the hon. and gallant Member for East Leyton (Major Church) with regard to the Committee that has to be set up. It is only a detail, but I do think that, in certain respects, it would be strengthened by the addition of, perhaps, a financial magnate from the City of London, or one or two other men of business, who would assist the Committee in making a correct and proper Report. I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Drake (Sir A Shirley Benn) on bringing forward this Motion, and I can assure the hon. Member for Northern Cornwall (Sir C. Marks) that, as far as I am concerned, I shall not treat it on a party basis. I feel that it is far too vital, not only for this House of Commons, but for the whole nation, to understand this question of export trade. In the past, in 1914, it was always said that we imported four
loaves out of five, consumed and it was said—and I believe it can be said to-day—that at certain times of the year, if we had not these imports from abroad, and, therefore, the exports to pay for them, we should starve in about three months. The hon. Member for Drake stated that we had to bring into this country raw materials and foodstuffs, and that we exported, against those, two classes of commodities. He forgot, however, the Debt to the United States of America. We have to export in order to pay that Debt. We were lucky last year in exporting more to the United States than we did in 1922, in spite of the Fordney Tariff. We also paid off part of that loan in gold, but the rate of exchange undoubtedly helped our exports, because, the dollar being at a premium as compared with the pound, it assisted the exports from this country.
I think that is a very strong point to remember in dealing with any export trade. The foreign trade of this country for 1923 was £1,983,000,000. It was an increase compared with the previous year of £157,000,000, or 8 per cent. It is very difficult to compare 1922 with 1923 owing to Great Britain having lost the exports in regard to the Irish Free State. There is an item which has to be considered in exports and that is the invisible exports. These are comprised of shipping, commissions, bank charges, etc. Last year they amounted to the large sum of £325,000,000. There was a balance in favour of this country of roughly £100,000,000 and we invested abroad practically that whole sum, £97,000,000. Our foreign investments in 1923 were £97,000,000. There is going to be a certain amount of trouble in the future with regard to our exports. We send more to India than to any other country in the world and, as hon. and right hon. Members know, at the present time, India is considering a big tariff against our steel trade. India is considering paying bounties to any Indian company in India which will make wagons. That must affect our exports. We may be able to get over it in certain ways, but we have to take these things into consideration, and it is in that way that I welcome the Motion of the hon. Member for the Drake Division in that the Committee must go into this question which must affect us, especially in reference to India. The hon.
Member for Northern Cornwall referred to credits. He knows as well as we know that there is an Exports Credit Scheme. Firms have not come forward and taken the full amount allowed by that scheme as passed by this House. It is a difficult thing to carry out this Exports Credit Scheme. If the credit of the Company is good enough, it can be obtained in the City of London, although I warn Members that credits are getting more difficult in the future than they have been in the past.
There is one suggestion I should like to throw out to the hon. Member for Plymouth so that we might increase our export trade, and that is in encouraging foreign investments. That is, for foreign countries to come to London and place their loans in London. There are only two countries in the world that can lend money at the present to foreign countries, ourselves and the United States of America. Where the difficulty comes in with regard to ourselves, is that during the War we put a 2 per cent. stamp duty on all foreign investments floatations coming into this country, which meant a revenue to this country of, roughly, about £1,250,000. In the United States there is no stamp duty at all. I do contend that possibly the right hon. Member the President of the Board of Trade might pass on that hint to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It would encourage foreign investments in this country. What does that mean? It means that goods would leave this country and it would help our export trade. I cannot help thinking that that suggestion is possibly worth considering.

Mr. WALLHEAD: Would the result of that be that after interest on your investments was paid you would get a big import back?

Sir F. WISE: Yes, but the interest is paid over several years. It takes a longtime to pay sinking fund and interest and it gradually comes back. One thing I want to suggest, that all those foreign loans and even home loans, can only be paid out of the savings of the people. It must be the savings which make us prosperous, and it is only their prosperity which will enable these exports to continue and expand as we all desire they should do. I welcome this Committee, and I again congratulate the hon. Member for the Drake Division of Plymouth on bringing forward this Motion.

Mr. HILLARY: It affords me very great pleasure to hear the hon. Member for the Drake Division (Sir A. S. Benn). It came very strangely to manufacturers listening to the speech that we had from the hon. Member on the Labour benches, who was instructing us and giving us some idea of the man who knows nothing about the manufacturer's difficulty, and telling us how we ought to run his businesses. The idea of going to Lancashire and advising the cotton manufacturers there that they might rely on some sort of synthetic production which would take the place of ordinary cotton is almost too ridiculous to speak of. I welcome and support the Motion for one special reason. I believe it will bring about an investigation into the whole of our Consular Services. I believe it will make us realise how important it is that a manufacturing nation should have in every important country in the world men who will understand and take a much keener interest in our products than they have hitherto. As a manufacturer I can remember myself that we had the greatest difficulty in finding out what the wants were in the various parts of the world, the various peculiarities, the various differences necessary to suit these particular markets. All these things are important, and it would be of great assistance to the manufacturer who cannot keep a representative in every country in the world if we had some national system. I have no doubt that the explanation of Germany's great and rapid advance in pre-War days was due to the fact that the German Government worked in conjunction with her industries in capturing these markets. To be told here to-night that we have a Board of Trade and everything is satisfactory is disappointing. That is the worst word I will use. We all recognise that the huge debt of the War must be paid for by our own industry, and we also recognise that it will take some time, however capable this Government or any Government may be in the reconstruction of Europe, before Europe can regain the purchasing power she had in pre-War days. Now we have the wide markets of the East as well as South America, which have never been thoroughly developed so far as this country is concerned. I think myself that the British manufacturer is very much misunderstood. I remember as a
boy in New Zealand the complaint of the New Zealander was, "We cannot get what we want from the British manufacturer," and they were blaming the British manufacturer, while the real reason was that the British manufacturer did not know what was wanted, and had no one in New Zealand to bring before him exactly the requirements. Because I believe that a Committee constituted on even broader lines than suggested by the Motion will prove very useful and helpful to the industries of this country, I shall be very glad to support the Motion.

Mr. MARLEY: The Mover of the Motion has said that in order to feed our people we must sell our manufactured goods abroad. From that he went on to say that only in so far as Germany is able to sell her manufactured goods abroad, or Europe in general, will they be able to buy our goods. I hope a large number of the hon. Gentleman's party have also come to that conclusion, because it differs very considerably from their usual views. The hon. Gentleman went further, and said we were getting up against international competition. That is more or less true. I believe it can be said, with a good deal of truth, that every country possessing fuel, economic power, or even, we will say, natural economic power, with any quantity of raw material at all, has proceeded to use that raw material for manufacturing. The industrial revolution has not been confined to any one country. It is a curious thing that every country that has proceeded along the lines of industrial revolution has taken the notion that it must manufacture for export. It may be perfectly natural, but that is one point the inquiry ought to go into, whether it is absolutely necessary to manufacture for an export trade. They might consider, at the same time, whether, in the competition to capture and maintain an export market, as they do to-day, the chief way of reducing the cost of productions is to reduce the wages of the worker, thereby restricting the home market by lowering home consumption and necessitating, by their very advance, a further export market. It is true that if we can reduce overhead charges, make industry more efficient, and give higher wages to the workers we shall increase our home market and, so far as we in-
crease our home market, do away with the necessity of this enormous export market.
It would appear that the necessity for an export market for every manufacturing country has some relation to the inequality of the distribution of capital. A man with an income of £10,000 will not spend as much upon the economic necessities of life as one with an income of £1,000, and I think the home consumption of a people could be increased by a more equal distribution of capital. Again, to come to the development of Imperial cotton, I think the hon. Gentleman will notice this fallacy in his argument, that as America begins to manufacture her own raw cotton so we shall have to find more raw material to keep Lancashire going. That is true, but notice at the same time that unless the consumption of the world's cotton goods goes up, the increased production of cotton will not solve the problem, because as America manufactures her own cotton she will be attempting to get the very markets we have now, and if you increase the raw cotton to keep Lancashire going without increasing the market for the consumption of the goods you will be up against a difficulty as badly as you are to-day. There is another factor. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has ever considered whether the export of capital has anything to do with the industrial development of countries on competitive lines with our own.

Sir F. WISE: We do not export capital.

Mr. MARLEY: What we do is to invest money abroad, but do these goods exported by us in the shape of machinery go to the building up of competitive industries in another country? I think that has been the case more often than not in the past, certainly in Germany. Instead of making it complimentary to our home industry we are making it supplementary to our home industry. We could have developed our raw material for our home enterprise by making our investments complimentary rather than supplementary. Instead of increasing the productive capacity of other peoples we could have used our investments for the development of raw material in our own home markets.
As the world proceeds along the line of industrial development all follow the blind
habit of doing what their neighbours have done before, manufacturing with the coal, the fuel, and the machinery which has been invented the same kind of goods which have been produced in industrial countries using raw materials of the same kind. There is not a very wide field for development unless we get a greater demand for other commodities, because the industrial revolution definitely tends towards mass production, and mass production of the economic needs of the people as a whole, so it is confined to clothing, boots, shelter, means of transport and so on. If we are to understand the whole position of economic development on the lines of the industrial revolution, to avoid conflicts, not only for an export market but conflicts for the market from which they draw raw materials, we shall have to have not only business men on the Committee but men who are prepared to come not with ideas of export markets at all, men who may have new ideas of a co-operative system in the world with markets complimentary to the industry and not supplementary to it, people who are prepared to take a broad view, who are prepared to understand. That what we have to do at the moment is to get food for our people, and what we are attempting to do all the time is to export to purchase that food, remembering at the same time that it should be possible to have greater efficiency of production and higher purchasing power of our own people at home if you have a greater consumption at home, and so reduce the necessity for an export market.

Sir PHILIP LLOYD-GREAME: I think the House will be grateful to the hon. Member for the Drake Division of Plymouth (Sir A. S. Benn) for tabling this Motion, because it gives us an opportunity of discussing a very important problem. I do not think anyone in any quarter of the House can be satisfied with the present position of our export trade. I am not going to weary the House with a number of figures, but I should like to read the figures given in answer to a question not long ago, setting out the position of our export trade. If you want to get an accurate appreciation it is enormously important to get your figures down to a common basis of pre-War values. I dare say there are many who have not seen the answer that was given. The information was given in a
written answer. The question put was as to the value of our import and export trade to-day and in recent years compared with 1913, taking 1913 values as 100. I will give first the figures as to imports of raw materials and articles mainly unmanufactured, because that is an indication of what the total manufacturing output of our country is, and gives us some indication of the home market as well as the overseas market. While I agree to a certain extent with what was said by the last speaker as to the importance of the home market, I do not agree that a mere redistribution of wealth will increase the general purchasing power of the community. Taking the imports of raw materials, the figures show, as compared with 1913 values at 100, that in 1922 the percentage was 79.4, in 1923, 79.1, and from January to March, 1924, 73.9. Taking exports of articles wholly or mainly manufactured, the figures show that in 1922 the percentage was 66.5 and in 1923, 73.3, and for the first quarter of 1924—when there was in one month a great expansion in exports, though, unfortunately, it has been going down more recently, the percentage was 74.2, as against 100 in 1913.
To-day we have a population of something like 1,750,000 more than we had at the last census period. The efficiency of production is enormously increased, and, consequently, we have to do a bigger business in order to keep the same number of men employed, and yet we are doing less than three-quarters of our volume of overseas pre-War trade. Such a situation must fill us with a great measure of disquiet, and is in itself a sufficient reason for the moving of this Resolution to-night.

Captain BERKELEY: Do the figures for 1923–24 include Ireland?

Sir P. LLOYD-GREAME: For this year, no, but you have adjustments to make both ways, and I do not think you will find that it varies very much.

Mr. HILLARY: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether he agrees that taking the figures of 1913 and the figures of 1923 that our export trade is somewhere about £100,000,000 short?

Sir P. LLOYD-GREAME: I am very anxious not to get into figures of millions of pounds. One million pounds to-day is quite a different thing from £1,000,000 before the War. The fairest way that I can put it is to say that our export trade
is only three-quarters of what it was before the War. That is a fairer and more comprehensive statement. As to the question put by the hon. and gallant Member for Central Nottingham (Captain Berkeley), I am not quite sure whether it affects it one way or the other, but practically I think it is negligible. On the whole, I am inclined to think that the figures are rather worse than better. That is my impression, and I think the President of the Board of Trade will confirm that. What are the three factors which we have to consider in a solution of this absolutely vital problem, because it is a problem of our bread and butter? The first consideration is the extension of markets, the second is the efficiency of our industry, and the third is the cost of manufacture in this country. These are the three principal factors which we must consider when we are dealing with this matter.
I do not know whether a Committee such as the one that is proposed in this Resolution or a Committee of a different character would help as regards markets. I am not sure. I am inclined to think that you have most of the evidence that you need if you will only act upon it. It is very often said, "Well, all you have to do if you want to get the markets right is to restore Europe and get stable conditions." Undoubtedly that is of the greatest possible importance, and if you take the long view over a great period of years it is of absolutely vital importance; but do not let the House be misled into thinking that that alone is the solution, or that immediately that is going to be even a palliation. I remember this point being put very forcibly by the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), when he said, "Do not suppose for a moment that when you have restored Europe that that is going to put things right."
The right hon. Gentleman was quite right in that statement, because when you restore Europe the first thing that you restore in Europe is not its purchasing power, but its producing power. Remember that throughout the War every country was increasing its capacity to manufacture. Every country in the War was manufacturing munitions as hard as it could, and extending its plant, and every country that was neutral was doing the same thing to supply belligerents
with munitions, and also preparing to take that overseas trade which the belligerent countries had hitherto enjoyed, so that you have to-day in Europe, as you have in this country, an enormously increased capacity for production.

Sir F. WISE: But they have not the credit.

Sir P. LLOYD-GREAME: They may not have the credit, but they have an enormously increased productive capacity, and the fact that they have not the credit at the moment is not going to prevent them from being formidable competitors in future. If they are able to produce more cheaply than we are, and to make more profit out of their production, the credit will come to them, and they will have no difficulty in obtaining the necessary credit, other things being equal—I mean, political conditions being stable. I do not want to be deflected from my main proposition, though I felt that I must answer the point put from such an authoritative source by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford (Sir F. Wise).
It is agreed that in these countries you have this enormously increased capacity for production, and the first thing that happens when you restore Europe will be increased production. Increased consumption will follow somewhat behind. If we take the iron and steel trade, should I be wrong if I said that the capacity of Europe to-day to produce was 50 per cent. or 75 per cent. or 100 per cent. more than the capacity of the world to absorb at the present time? That means that, as you restore Europe, you will find concurrently with it this greater productive capacity and far keener competition. That means that you have to look for trade not only there but elsewhere. I do not want to anticipate the debate which we shall necessarily have, and a debate which I wish and still hope may be taken without party bias. Surely, the market which lies open to us is the market within our own Empire. If one goes back over history, one finds that in the most critical time through which our industry passed, long before the present crisis, namely, between 1875 and 1895, when for years our foreign trade remained absolutely at a standstill, the one thing that kept the increasing population of this country
going was that our Empire trade doubled during those 15 or 20 years.
You have the same opportunity to-day. What has been said about the American debt makes it all the more important to try to develop the new markets in the Empire. We do not want a Committee to go into that. You have the work of the Imperial Economic Conference. I do hope, particularly in view of something which I have seen in the papers of one of the internal organisations of the right hon. Gentleman's party, that he may reconsider the rather hasty decision not to proceed with the appointment of an Imperial Economic Committee. That seems to me the best way to carry out the inquiry which my hon. Friend suggests. I venture, as an older Member, to congratulate sincerely the hon. Member for East Leyton (Major Church) on the speech which he delivered. I understand it is not a maiden speech, and I only wish that I had heard him make earlier speeches if they were of an equal quality. But the second factor which I would lay down is that the most important requirement in order to get efficiency is to give security. The hon. Member said that you want more money spent on research. You do. But let him and his friends remember that to get money sunk in research, the one thing above all necessary is to afford security and the full sense security to firms in order that they may make their investments on that account. Under the Board of Trade, in conjunction with the Department of Scientific Research, you can probably render such help as a Government can give. If the Government co-operate in promoting the spending of money on such processes of inquiry, I believe that they will be spending money to great advantage.
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The third factor which I would lay down when considering how to fill up the gap in our export trade is the question of cost. Here I believe that a real inquiry is wanted. I doubt whether an inquiry into the incidence of taxation is going to add very much to our knowledge. I would like to see an inquiry directed into the difference in wages in what have been called the sheltered and unsheltered trades and the causes of those differences, and the effect of those differences in adding to the cost of the unsheltered trades and reducing the wages in those trades, and making it more difficult for
us to compete in the world. Remember it is the unsheltered trades which have to sell the products which buy the food on which the sheltered and unsheltered trades live. That inquiry, I am sure, is included in the intention of the Motion. I should like to see coupled with it an investigation into the comparative incidence of these charges on the business and trades of this country and other countries. Further, in that connection, let us look into that great and important item in overhead charges, the cost of taxation, whether direct, or indirect—and in taxation I include all national expenditure and rates—and let us know what is the effect of that charge upon the competitive trades in this country as compared with costs which fall upon similar trades in other countries.
I believe that an inquiry of that kind into the competitive costs and what gives rise to those costs, and the incidence of those costs, would be of value, because they would supply us with what an inquiry ought to be directed to, accurate information, which we have not at present, upon which we can base policy and decide what action it is right to take. If the inquiry took that form I should welcome it. I do not think it necessary to bring in a High Court Judge. The only inquiry for which we want to take a High Court Judge away from his judicial duties is an inquiry in which he would have judicial duties to perform. You could get men of practical experience and economic experience, not confined to Members of this House, to conduct an inquiry of this kind, and I believe that it would be a real contribution to our knowledge of this subject and of real assistance to the trade of this country.

Mr. WEBB: I am sure that the House will agree with the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down that the hon. Member for the Drake Division of Plymouth (Sir A. S. Benn) has performed a very useful service in bringing forward this subject, and that we are indebted to him not only for that but for the manner in which he explained what he had in view. As the Debate has proceeded I think that a passing observer would have reason to be strengthened in his view that the hon. Member for Plymouth has really made a suggestion which meets with a great deal of sympathy in all parts of
the House. I am not going to attempt to traverse all the ground, but I do hope that before I have done, I shall be able to convince the hon. Member that the Government is not unsympathetic to what he proposes. If I might comment on some of the speeches that have been made right through, I would enter a note of protest against—I do not think that it was really meant—a fallacy in which all of us are apt to indulge, for we cannot help thinking that the commerce and trade and production of the world is a definite quantity in this sense, that if we get more, some other person must get less.
I do not agree with that. I do not think that anybody, when he comes to think it out, will think that that is so. Still, we are always speaking as if we believed in what seems to me to be the fallacy of supposing that because other people may do better and become more skilful or more productive, therefore somebody else—and here we usually mean ourselves—must necessarily be doing somewhat less. I may be presumptuous or rash, but I take the opposite view. I believe that this country will prosper more and more by the prosperity of any other country, and more still by the prosperity of every other country. I believe, with Napoleon, that we are a nation of shopkeepers and that we benefit by the prosperity of our customers and not by their adversity. The more any other nation learns to do, even of the things that we have done, the more we shall be enabled to do. I put that forward almost as a paradox, by which I mean something which is true but which seems false. I am not afraid of a paradox. The paradox is that other countries take our trade—as it is sometimes put—or our manufactures, and yet our country, in the past has flourished, when that has happened, and I believe it will flourish in the future with that happening. We sometimes hear phrases about looking after one's own country and about patriotism. I feel myself a very patriotic person, because I believe in my country. I have full confidence that it is going to be successful in the future as it has been in the past. It was suggested by one hon. Member that these exports—the foreign loans which the hon. Member for Ilford (Sir F. Wise) wanted to encourage—were too apt to go away in the form of machinery to build up competitive industry in other countries. We have been
doing that all the time. It is exactly 100 years ago this year that we repealed the law which prohibited the export of machinery. Our ancestors, in their wisdom, were so very anxious that the inventions of Boulton and Watt should not go to other countries, that it was made a penal offence to export machines. That was quite consistent with the suggestions that have been floating about to-night, that we really suffer when, say, a cotton industry is set up, or when steam engines are built in some other country, or when some other country learns how to make something which we are making. Our ancestors believed that, and made it a penal offence to export machinery. They also made it a penal offence for skilled artisans to emigrate from these islands. Since the repeal of that law, we have had our artisans all over the Continent, and throughout the rest of the world, setting up this machinery which has gone out, and working the machinery when it has been set up. This country has gone on increasing its trade, and increasing its standard of life and prosperity since then.
Those facts are consistent with my view that this country benefits by the prosperity and the advances in industrial civilisation of other countries. I do not want to indulge in the rather gloomy view which has been expressed to-night Certainly, the present state of things is bad enough, but I am old enough to have lived through very bad times. The first thing I remember was the very bad slump of 1879. It was very much worse than anything which this country has suffered, even in the depths of depression after the War. We got over that. I admit that the present state of things is very unsatisfactory. The right hon. Gentleman who preceded me at the Board of Trade (Sir P. Lloyd-Greame) said our exports of British manufactures were only 75 per cent. of what they were in 1913. But 1913 was a boom year; I believe a record year. Looking back, we find trade has gone in rather definite cycles. The year 1913 is at the top of one of those cycles. We have no reason to feel aggrieved that we are not actually at the top of the wave. I would ask my right hon. Friend to take another figure, which is confirmatory, and gives a better idea. Suppose we take the imports of raw material which were retained in this
country. If you take the amounts of cotton, wool, iron and various other things which we have imported, and retained in this country, you get a certain measure of our manufacturing industry. It is a rough figure, but it gives a kind of index in the absence of anything better. Compared with 1913, it is about 80 per cent. for 1923.
As regards unemployment, we know we still have, roughly speaking, one million unemployed, which is a sad enough fact. It is going down, but a million unemployed is a very awkward fact. Let us take the trade union percentage, because that corresponds pretty closely to the total number of unemployed, and if you restrict yourself to the percentage of trade unionists employed in certain industries, you are able to carry the comparison further back. I believe the figure for unemployment to-day corresponds pretty well with the corresponding figure for unemployment in 1909. In 1909 we, no doubt, thought trade was bad, but we did not think it was so very bad, or that we were in such a very severe crisis. To have come through the War, and have had the slump that followed the War, and to find that we are no worse now in the way of unemployment than we were in 1909, means that we need not quite lose all heart. We may expect that just as 1909 rose to the top of the boom in 1913, so 1923 may rise again to a boom in 1926. I hope hon. Members will not put any money on that. [Interruptions.] Prophets are often right in their pre-dictions, but they are generally a good deal out in their dates. That is why they are not millionaires. Therefore, while we have every reason gravely to consider the state of trade, we need not take a too gloomy view about it.
The hon. Member for Plymouth wants a Committee to inquire into the export trade. I would suggest that is rather too limited a reference. The export trade does not mean merely the merchants who are willing to send goods abroad, but it is carried right back to manufactures for export. It is the manufactures for export that are primarily concerned, and it is pretty difficult to distinguish the export from other manufacturing industries. I suggest to him that while we are concerned about our exports, we might bear in mind why it is we care about exports at all. I am not prepared to say that the profit which the exporters make by the
export trade is the measure of the advantage of that trade to the country. We must take a wider view than that. I am not uttering any novelty, if I remind the House that the reason we are concerned about our exports is because we want our imports, and that the whole object of exports from the national point of view is that we should get our imports. We are therefore just as much interested in imports as in exports. We have got to take the whole of our trade for the inquiry. We carry on our export trade solely—apart from the profits which the manufacturers make, which I disregard—in order to get the imports. Let me put it my own way. We weave on our Lancashire looms the iron ore and the copper that we want, and the tea and the spices that we use are made in the mills and the forges of the West Riding of Yorkshire. What the men on the Clyde build is not ships and engines alone, but the wool and the copper and the jute and the rubber which feed our factories all over England. That is why we carry on our export trade. It is because we do not get enough of these things at present to feed all our people, or, at any rate, not enough to keep them employed, that I am concerned about the export trade as much as the Mover of this Motion.
I agree with a good deal that has been said about the importance of getting further markets, but I would like to tell the House that there has not been as much change in the distribution of our trade as might have been expected. We have got into the habit of thinking that Europe is ruined and that we cannot sell goods to Europe. As a matter of fact, making allowance for the changes in regard to Ireland, as far as they can be made, Europe in 1923 took 33.7 per cent. of our exports, or roughly one-third. In 1913 Europe took 34 per cent. of our exports. Therefore, the 1923 figure is only fractionally less than that for 1913 as a proportion of the total of our exports. Our total exports are down by 20 or 25 per cent., but Europe is, relatively to the total trade, exactly as good a market as before the War. I do not say that of Russia and Germany, but I am speaking of one part of Europe with another; you must take Europe as a whole. If goods do not go to Germany they go to Holland, and if not to Denmark they go to Sweden, and so on. Take the Empire as a whole, or the British Commonwealth of Nations,
as I prefer to call it. Our trade with the Empire has in the past greatly developed. If you compare 1923 with 1913 the Empire as a whole took 35.5 per cent.—I am speaking now of quantities—of our total exports in 1923 as against 36.3 per cent. of the total in 1913. The figures are very nearly identical, though slightly down for 1923. The United States and South America took 16.8 per cent. in 1923 compared with 16.2 per cent. in 1913; the Far East took 8.6 per cent. against 8.4 per cent. The total result is that the distribution of United Kingdom exports in volume, in 1923, compared with 1913, has remained extraordinary stable.
That, however, does not prove that we should not get more markets. I am not sure that we could find any undiscovered countries. Both the North Pole and the South Pole have been searched and are not very promising places for development at present. Short of going to Mars it is very difficult to find absolutely new markets. We can, therefore, only develop the markets that exist, because the enterprise and the ingenuity of our merchants have already carried them to every part of the world. The common expression "finding new markets" is, therefore, not quite accurate, for it can be only a question of new development. This Government, like any other Government, is as much concerned to see the development of overseas parts of the Empire as it can possibly be. We have accepted the Resolution of the Imperial Economic Conference on the subject of overseas settlement. We want to see what can be done by administrative action and how far we can pursue that policy of overseas settlement in order to make migration within the different parts of the Empire as easy as possible and as open to everybody as possible. In that matter we think great stress should be laid on the importance of family and group migration and settlement, rather than on mere sporadic migration. There has already been an offer to the Commonwealth of Australia, under the Empire Settlement Act, 1922, of a large grant in aid of settlement schemes and development purposes connected with settlement schemes approved by the Government. This Government is renewing that offer, and we hope it will result in a large development of overseas settlement. I do not like to put it that this is a mere question of developing
markets. It really is a means of opening up brighter and happier opportunities for such people as choose to avail themselves of it, and I would rather look at it from the point of view of migration than from the rather sordid point of view that we are merely to get additional markets for Sheffield or for Bradford. It will have that effect, as we hope and believe, but it is not for that reason that it is being done, and I only mention it in this connection because of its relation to the subject under discussion.
Hon. Members will excuse me for not going into the very interesting details of the many interesting speeches which have been made. I want to come to the Resolution itself. I hope the hon. Member who moved the Resolution will not mind if I say I do not like the shape of this proposed Committee. It is not merely that we do not like to take a Judge of the High Court from judicial work. Indeed there are not too many Judges working in the Courts, and that is a standing objection to the proposal. I am not quite sure, moreover, that a Judge of the High Court is really the best person in a case of this kind. It is not merely a question of listening to evidence. It is a question of listening to witnesses who, in the case of a judicial inquiry, would probably be ordered out of Court because they all come to testify on matters of which they have no personal knowledge, and they really give their opinions which have to be taken for what they are worth. A Judge of the High Court is not in a better position to estimate the value of that so-called evidence than a layman. It is suggested that the Committee should be composed of six Members of the House of Commons, three being Cabinet Ministers or ex-Cabinet Ministers and three possessing business and trade qualifications.

Sir P. LLOYD-GREAME: Not mutually exclusive.

Mr. WEBB: I was going to say that I would not quarrel with the suggestion that it was mutually exclusive, but if the hon. Member who moved the Resolution will allow me to say so, I do not think the proposal provides for all the elements necessary to such an inquiry. The Committee is to report to the House before the Summer Recess, which would compress all their work into the months of
June and July. I do not like that kind of Committee. They would only register a sort of consensus or summary of the statements of opinion made before them. No doubt the Report would be very ably drafted by a competent civil servant, who would be made secretary, but I am not prepared to think that it would be of the value suggested.

Sir A. BENN: Would they not have the Board of Trade behind them?

Mr. WEBB: They might have the Board of Trade in front of them. The Board of Trade might be in the dock, and I am not sure that they would have the Board of Trade behind them. For that reason, among others, I think that if you want this inquiry, the inquiry would have to be rather longer than between now and the 1st August. We could not get all the facts which it is desirable that we should have, and we should not be able to probe into the facts in anything like that time. On the other hand, I think the House will know that an inquiry, something of this sort, is being pressed for in all sorts of quarters. I do not want to make anybody or any party responsible, but certainly I have had evidence that an inquiry is desired by manufacturers, by traders, by Chambers of Commerce, and we are obliged to take notice of that fact. How much am I entitled to say? There is no doubt that the subject is very seriously under consideration by the Government, and I think, if my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth would be content with an assurance that he will hear about the Committee very soon, but not ask me to say what the Committee can do and what form the inquiry can take, he would not be disappointed. I do not want to disguise from the House that it is not an easy thing to do. We have first to settle the scope of the Committee. If you give it an unlimited scope, you get altogether too large an inquiry. On the other hand, if you attempt to confine the scope, of the inquiry, you have to be very careful to see that you get in what ought to be got in. The personnel of the Committee, or the Commission, or the body making the inquiry is not at all easy to settle. You really want, as the hon. Member for Ilford (Sir F. Wise) said, somebody acquainted with financial machinery, and I think we want a little statistical, shall I
say economic, experience also. Frankly, I am not in a position to make a definite statement as to the form that the inquiry will take, and still less as to the personnel, but if the hon. Member will ask the Prime Minister about that to-morrow, or at a later date, I think he will get satisfaction.

Sir P. LLOYD-GREAME: Before the right hon. Gentleman closes on that matter, might I ask him whether, as this is obviously a matter of general interest that involves no party question, he would, in the usual manner, consult with the representative Members of the different parties in this House before he settles the terms of reference?

Mr. WEBB: I can assure the right hon. Gentleman, in answer to that question, that there is not the least question of making this in any sense a partisan inquiry, and certainly some consultation will take place. That certainly will be done. It would necessarily follow, as it is not at all desired that it should be a party matter. On the other hand, it is very strongly desired that it should not be a party matter and that the inquiry should be of an authoritative character and one which would command respect. Therefore, it must be as far as possible divested of any partisan character, and I think I can assure the House that if the inquiry is undertaken by the Government, it will be done in such a way as will be satisfactory in that respect. I cannot announce to-night the form of the inquiry, or the form of the body to make the inquiry, or the personnel. All those matters are left for the moment out of my hands, and I can only assure the House that it is the wish of the Government to have such an inquiry as would seem to be best after due consultation. Perhaps, with that assurance, the hon. Member for Plymouth might think fit to withdraw his Motion.

Sir A. BENN: My object in limiting the Committee to six Members of the House of Commons, with an independent Judge, was that the House of Commons has a responsibility to the country to look after its business, and it was to leave it to them to say what they thought of it, while the proposal to have a Judge as Chairman was, of course, because of the character of impartiality that such a Chairman would give to the Committee's procedure.

Captain BERKELEY: I hope the President of the Board of Trade will forgive me if I say that his remarks with regard to the proposed Committee, which he led us to suppose might, in certain eventualities, be substituted for that proposed by the Mover of the Resolution, are somewhat indefinite. Will he also forgive me for saying that this is a Motion which has been on the Order Paper for some days, if not for some weeks, and I think hon. Members will have expected some kind of definite reply from the Government, if they could not accept the proposals before them, as to what their alternative proposals would be. He says that if my hon. Friend opposite will put a question to the Prime Minister to-morrow, he may, or may not, get a satisfactory answer. What reason is there, if the Prime Minister can make a statement on the subject tomorrow, why the House of Commons should not have that statement tonight? After all, this is not a new question brought before the House. It was a question discussed by many hon. Members during the Election. It is a question which, if I may say so, I myself raised prior to the Dissolution, at the time when the Leader of the Opposition was Prime Minister, and proposed to go to the country on an economic issue. I said at the time—and I am sure a number of other Members of the House agree—that it was quite unnecessary and wrong to take a step of that kind without some big economic inquiry into the situation of the country and the Empire, in the light of post-War conditions.
Nobody can deny that post-War conditions have profoundly affected the situation. The right hon. Gentleman, who is himself so renowned an economist, does not need to be told that there are at least half a dozen factors in the economic life of the world to-day which simply did not exist in 1914. I will mention one, to begin with. One is embodied in the Treaties of Peace, and is what is called the "Labour Covenant." In the Labour Covenant of the Treaties of Peace, for the first time is laid down, for adoption by all the signatories, the principle that Labour is no longer to be regarded as a commodity, but is to be regarded as something much higher, and it is to be the duty of the various Governments to undertake progressive legislation, and progressive social reform, for the purpose of
increasing the remuneration of labour in industry. That is a factor which did not exist before the War. Before the War, it was an aspiration; to-day, so far as this country is concerned, it is very largely a realisation. All parties in the State and in the House of Commons, it is no exaggeration to say, are agreed to extend to the labouring partners in industry a far larger share of the return on the produce which they manufacture. That is the first new factor.
Then there is the factor which has been referred to throughout this Debate—and the right hon. Gentleman's remarks in regard to the total volume of the trade which we do with Europe do not take away the truth of that factor—the devastation of Europe, the want of purchasing power in Europe. The fact that we are sending a great quantity of goods into Europe—roughly, the same volume as we did before the War—proves nothing whatever, because the right hon. Gentleman has omitted to say, what I am sure is the truth, that a considerable proportion—I do not know the exact proportion—of the produce which is sent from this country to the Continent is sent at cost price, and, in some cases, below cost price, in order to keep the good will in the foreign markets. That factor did not operate before the War, and you do not dispose of the problem of the devastation of Europe by pointing to the very small disparity in the volume of the trade to-day compared with what it was in 1913.
Then you have again the problem in existence before the country and very much aggravated since the War, the problem of an increased working population. You have also the problem which is, to my mind, very largely if not entirely a new factor, the very great entry of the woman worker into industry. That has developed, and has followed quite naturally, upon the very large employment of women in munitions making during the War. It has come, and come to stay. You have a greater volume of unemployment than before the War. The right hon. Gentleman finds some satisfaction in the fact that the unemployment figures are not materially worse than they were in 1909. Yes, but consider what they have been in the last two years, and what they are now! That is another factor which must be borne in mind in connection with this matter.
There is another factor which has only been touched upon—and I do not wish to detain the House except to refer to the effect of taxation upon industry. That is a factor which would make an investigation entirely of its own, as to how far industry can continue to bear it. I do not want to be led away from the two points I have jotted down, or I shall detain the House too long, but the hon. Member behind me has just mentioned finance. That is not a point of the taxation matter, but it has to be taken into account. There is the question which to a certain extent has been illustrated by what the right hon. Gentleman said in regard to the sheltered and unsheltered trades—the question of the transport trades, for instance. These have been very seriously affected by the factor to which he referred, that far higher wages rule in the sheltered trades than in the unsheltered trades. There may have been a disparity between the rate of remuneration in these respective areas of trade before the War, but they were not in any way comparable to the existing disparity. As the right hon. Gentleman truly pointed out in his speech, one of the principal handicaps is the indirect taxation upon industry in the rate of wages paid in the sheltered trades as against the unsheltered trades.
There is another factor which appears in this connection, and that is the purchasing value of our customers abroad, that is the individual quantities that the populations of the various parts of the world consume. It is a most important point. If you only take the trouble to make the simplest investigation into the conditions of the export trade, you will find the most astonishing results. You find, for instance, that the individual customer in New Zealand or Australia is worth something like 25 to 30 times the customer in America. That is to say, that, taking the volume of trade that we do with our Dominions and comparing it with the volume of trade that we do with other parts of the world, the individual customer in our Dominions is enormously more valuable than the customer in other parts of the world. That leads obviously to this corollary, that if you can increase the number of customers in your Dominions you are taking a very important step towards creating those new markets to which reference has been
made. The corollary to that is that if you transport the surplus—I do not like the word used in relation to our population—but I give it as having been used by another Member—and I agree that we do not want to consider this country as over-populated, and we do not want to consider a certain section of the population as being obliged, owing to economic circumstances, to emigrate—if we consider that point of view at all. It is quite certain if you are going to offer substantial inducements to a large number of your population to go abroad you must consider not only the market they are going to provide for you but the market you are going to provide for them. The few factors which I have indicated seem to me to be something entirely new, and they have been modified by the state of affairs produced by the late War.
If you have these new conditions, what is more appropriate and natural than that there should be a strong committee representative of industry, of merchants, banking, shipping and the consumer set up to make a thorough investigation of the whole economic situation not only of this country, but of the Empire, to make a report for the purpose of reviewing our economic policy, and seeing how far it is right or wrong? I am quite sure that the hon. Member who moved this Motion will be willing to accept as an alternative any subsequent proposals which the President of the Board of Trade can put forward for setting up an alternative committee, but unless the Government give some definite undertaking within a definite time to set up a committee with definite terms of reference, I hope my hon. Friend will press his Motion to a Division.

Brigadier-General Sir HENRY CROFT: I agree that this is a question upon which we should not introduce old economic arguments. I think hon. Members will exonerate me from hiding strong views in that direction. But, after all, we heard a speech yesterday which practically informed the country that we have got to settle down and accept an unemployment figure of 800,000 men as normal for all time. We were only discussing earlier this week relief provisions which are moving in the direction of establishing a dole system practically from the cradle to the grave. The consequence is that it really does seem to me that this question of our
export trade and our internal trade ought to be put on the basis of a more or less non-controversial character, and that we should do everything we can to encourage a really impartial inquiry into this question which will be helpful to the House apart from what one might call the fiscal controversy.
We have many entirely different factors to consider. The President of the Board of Trade has told us that our trade with Europe is practically comparable with pre-War totals. I think that the hon. Gentleman who spoke from the Liberal benches stated what we can all accept as correct when he said that the great amount of that trade is being kept going, simply to hold our markets, at very little profit to those concerned. Then the President of the Board of Trade went on to tell us that our trade with the Empire is practically the same as it was pre-War, also with regard to ratio; but I think he will be the first to agree that that trade is immensely more profitable, where the question of profitable trade comes into consideration.
I feel that his confession that our trade with the Empire at the present time is only comparable in ratio to that of pre-War times is really in itself sufficient to warrant an immediate inquiry, because I suppose that no one, whatever their views, will deny the great advantage of Empire trade to this country. We have, as has often been pointed out by numerous speakers from every point of view, in the past discussed this question of the exchange of trade, and imports being paid for by exports, and we have always been told, and it is quite true, of course, that the more you buy, the more, probably, you sell in the long run. Surely it must be clear to everyone that, if you can have that double replacement of capital within the Empire, you are doing something that is strengthening both ends of the trading arrangements, and therefore, that we should do everything in our power to carry it out. I was sorry that the President of the Board of Trade did not tell us what the Government intend to do in order to carry out the spirit of that decision of the Economic Conference. Is he prepared to do everything in his power to grant credits on a large scale, in order to encourage trade within the Empire?
I believe that opinion in this House is veering round in the direction of doing
everything that is possible to stimulate migration within the Empire for those who really desire to go and are likely to prove successful; but it is no good encouraging all these hopes, and endeavouring to encourage a large system of migration, unless we can do something at the other end to make sure that those British settlers will find security for their markets. We have had big schemes put before this country in the last year by three Prime Ministers of different States in Australia with regard to this question, but it is no good our paying the fares of settlers to go to Australia, or anywhere else, unless we can secure work for them at the other end, and for that reason it does seem to me that it is vital, while encouraging migration, to do everything that can be done to build up the security of the markets. The President of the Board of Trade has, as I understand it, and I rejoiced to hear it, given what amounts—I think he will not correct me—to a specific pledge that the Cabinet are about to consider setting up a Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Drake (Sir A. Shirley Benn) has suggested an independent chairman, and the President of the Board of Trade seemed to think that a distinguished Judge or other legal authority was not, perhaps, the best, but I think we have to remember that my hon. Friend's proposal is that that Committee should be absolutely equally divided amongst the parties, so that there would not be the usual majority for one party and a Minority Report. If that be so, I think it is obvious that it is desirable that there should be someone—although I do not like lawyers—with a legal frame of mind, who can properly assist in assessing the evidence, and who is used to assessing and summing up. An hon. Member says, "Put a brigadier on." I dare say you might do worse. Not all brigadiers are scoundrels, and I would say the same of lawyers. But whoever the chairman is that the President of the Board of Trade recommends the Prime Minister to appoint, it must be obvious that he should be someone, if possible, who has not been actively engaged, let us say, in economic warfare in the past.
I only want to say one other word, and it is this: Whereas the internal trade of this country is, of course, of immensely greater importance than our export
trade as to total value, I think that men of all parties have come to the conclusion that really we have exhausted the roads towards palliatives, as far as regards providing work of a non-remunerative character. That being so, it surely is our bounden duty—I am not going to say to explore every avenue, and I am not going to suggest that you can discover new markets—to find out which are the markets where we can most profitably advance our policy and do the best we can with regard to credit. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the decision as far as it goes. I understand it is a specific pledge; that he will approach the Prime Minister, and that this Committee is to be set up. When he suggests that two to three months is all too short for this purpose, there seems to me no reason why this Committee should not get to work at once. I doubt whether it is possible for the Government to introduce any new Measures for finding work in this country other than those which have been already tried. There is no good us fiddling while Rome is burning. If we are to save the moral of the people, it is vital we should find some new way of providing work. That is only possible by extending our trade overseas.

Sir P. LLOYD-GREAME: The President of the Board of Trade has said in his reply that he is willing to set up a Committee of a more general character with certain Terms of Reference. I gather he is quite willing to discuss the matter in the usual way with the different parties in the House. May I make this further suggestion to him—because this is a matter of great interest to the commercial community, and this Motion is moved to-night by two Members whose connection with business is very long and very respected, and who hold very high representative positions in business organisations—that, in addition to consulting in the ordinary way representatives of the different parties, he should also consult the Mover and Seconder as to the Terms of Reference.

Mr. WEBB: I am very glad to reply to my hon. Friend. In order to make it quite clear, may I say that so far as I know the Government do not propose to make this in any sense a party Committee. It will not be a question of nominating Members from each side. I do not hesitate to say that some steps
will take place through the usual channels, and we shall certainly consult the Mover and Seconder. The Government must be responsible for the form of the Committee and for the Terms of Reference, but they will certainly take into the fullest consideration the desire that the Committee shall be one which will command the confidence of the House.

Mr. B. TURNER: Will the right hon. Gentleman also consult the trade union section of the House, because they are interested in the industry and commerce of the world?

Mr. WEBB: I would say I am sure steps will be taken to take care that nothing is done which would tend to cast any doubt on the Committee. I must not go on saying we will consult everybody, but the consideration put forward by my hon. Friend will not be forgotten.

Mr. VIVIAN: I do not rise to make a speech. There is a point my hon. Friend has not made clear regarding purchases per head in the Dominions and abroad, a point also made by my hon. Friend opposite which I think is without foundation if you examine the facts. I felt I must rise to offer one word in that connection. Comparison is made between the purchases per head in Europe. New Zealand, Australia and Canada, but we get no reference, when that argument used, to the fact that trade does not so much follow the flag as the loan, and, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne) said only a few nights ago, a loan is a credit granted in the lending country to the borrowing country to secure goods from the lending country. May I give one or two facts on that point? The figures for 1916 show that we had invested in the whole of Europe outside Great Britain £240,000,000. In foreign countries outside Europe we had invested £1,600,000,000. In British Possessions this little country had invested over £1,900,000,000. On the argument of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillhead, that involved the exportation of goods. Obviously where you lend your capital goods follow. You have not lent your capital to Europe, and therefore goods have not followed. The contribution that we have made to the Empire is that we have enabled it to come to the finest borrowing market in the world for the cheapest capital in the world, and so long
as you maintain your credit and make it better to borrow in the London market than in New York or any other centre, it will not be because they are brothers or cousins that the Dominions will come here for their credits but because it is the finest money market in the world. Follow the lesson laid down by our Chancellor and maintain the credit of the country at its highest, and it is the best contribution you can make to your trade, and above all, as experience shows, to the purchases within the Empire.

Sir A. SHIRLEY BENN: After the sympathetic way in which the President of the Board of Trade has received the Motion, may I ask leave to withdraw it?

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Orders of the Day — REGULATION OF RAILWAYS BILL.

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Sir J. NALL: This is a Bill framed in the interests of a very few people, without any regard whatsoever to the general question of transport facilities or the circumstances of railway companies in this country. The Bill is described as a Regulation of Railways Bill, but it is, really nothing of the sort. It does not set out to regulate railways. I happen to have read the Bill, as I do most of the private Bills which are submitted with the idea of their sliding through after 11 o'Clock at night. This particular Bill is absolutely—[An HON. MEMBER: "The limit!"] Yes, I am glad that it has been so described from the other side of the House and not from this. So far from being in accordance with its Title, as a Bill to regulate railways—

It being Eleven of the Clock, the Debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed upon Monday next (26th May).

Orders of the Day — WAR CHARGES (VALIDITY) (No. 2) BILL.

Again considered in Committee.

[Mr. ROBERT YOUNG in the Chair.]

Postponed Proceeding resumed on Clause 1.

The CHAIRMAN: The next Amendment stands in the name of the right hon. Member for Camborne (Mr. Leif Jones).

Mr. L. JONES: It is a consequential Amendment and I do not move it.

The CHAIRMAN: The next Amendment, to leave out paragraph (1), is out of Order.

Mr. HOPE SIMPSON: On a point of Order. I understand that you rule this Amendment out of order on the ground that milk was excluded at the time of the Ways and Means Resolution. May I draw attention to the Ways and Means Resolution? It will be noted that it refers to three separate kinds of charge. In the first place, it refers to charges made for or in connection with the grant of licences or permits issued or purporting to be issued in pursuance of the said powers. The second kind of charge is one made in connection with the control of the supplies or of the prices of certain commodities. It is there that the words "other than milk" are included. The third kind of charge relates to charges for services rendered. This Amendment does not deal with the prices charged for milk, but it deals with the twopences that were charged by the Food Controller for licences to sell milk. It, therefore, comes under the first of the three conditions and not under the second. From that it would appear that the twopences in regard to milk are not ruled out of consideration on the Committee stage of the Bill, because they are not included in the second class of charge, but are in the first class of charge. At the end of the first Clause we did not have the words "other than milk." Therefore, I submit for your consideration that these twopences charged in regard to licences to sell milk, not being excluded under the Resolution, we are at liberty to move Amendments with regard to them.

The CHAIRMAN: I have considered this Amendment very carefully, and I have come to the conclusion that in the Ways and Means Committee it was determined that all reference to charges connected with milk whatsoever should be ruled out by the Money Resolution, and the Minister was instructed to bring in his Bill based on that Resolution. For that reason, I declare the Amendment to be out of Order.

Mr. SIMPSON: May I point out that it in the Bill as it stands, when you read it the Preamble, it is perfectly clear that the words "other than milk" only apply to those charges which are included in "B" in the Preamble. If you look at line 7 on the next page you will find that that is so. It has nothing to say to the charges for licences for the sale of milk which come under the first heading, and, therefore—[HON. MEMBERS: "Order!"]

The CHAIRMAN: I cannot accept the opinion of the hon. Member in relation to this matter. I am clearly of opinion that the decision of the House of Commons was that there should be nothing in this Bill in relation to the milk question, and nothing was to be validated in relation to milk charges.

Mr. SIMPSON: Further on the point of Order—

The CHAIRMAN: I have given my ruling. The next Amendment, in the name of the hon. Member for the Stone Division of Staffordshire, which relates to milk, is out of Order for the same reason.

Mr. WEBB: I beg to move, in page 2, line 38, to leave out paragraph (ii), and to insert instead thereof:
(ii) where any such proceedings were instituted before the first day of September, nineteen hundred and twenty-two, any order made therein for the payment of costs to the person by whom the proceedings were instituted shall continue to have effect and shall be treated as being an order for payment of costs as between solicitor and own client, and where any proceedings so instituted are pending at the date of the passing of this Act, the person by whom the proceedings were instituted shall, unless the Court or a Judge of the Court or the tribunal dealing with the case thinks just to order otherwise, be entitled to an order directing payment of his costs of the proceedings as between solicitor and own client.
This Amendment is to carry out the undertaking which I gave on the Second Reading of the Bill.

Sir H. NIELD: I do not propose to object to this Amendment, but I would like to call attention to what happened on the 5th May. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hendon (Sir P. Lloyd-Greame) said:
I would make this plain here and now—and it would be satisfactory if we could have a firm assurance on it from the right hon. Gentleman—that in all cases where litigation has been begun and carried to any stage, whether it is before a single Judge in a
Court, or whatever may be the expense, the Government should give a complete indemnity against all costs. I do not mean taxed costs, but that they will repay to every single claimant who has taken action the full costs incurred. If the right hon. Gentleman will give an undertaking of that kind, it will be easier to come to a decision when the Bill gets into Committee.
Mr. WEBB: I can give, on behalf of the Government, the fullest possible undertaking on the lines he has indicated with regard to the costs."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th May, 1924; col. 170, Vol. 173.]
It is a denial of justice which this House should be slow to sanction that the word "instituted" should be put into this Amendment. The word means, technically, only those cases in which the authorities have been kind enough to permit a fiat to an action before September, 1922. I had to be away keeping an engagement, but I am told that the Attorney-General was pleased to be facetious at my expense. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] I do not care for the cries of that subordinate claque. I am here to assert my right as a Member of this House, and I will do so, notwithstanding any Minister on that Bench of a pretended Government—

Mr. LANSBURY: Do not be insolent.

Sir H. NIELD: I assert my right to say that an undertaking of that sort should not be cut down by a limitation of words which will shut out a great number of these persons, who legitimately tried their utmost to institute their cases by getting their petition of right sealed within the time mentioned in the Resolution. I beg the learned Attorney-General to give me, at any rate, credit for possessing a modicum of brain. I shall examine the OFFICIAL REPORT with some interest tomorrow morning, in view of his attack and suggestion that I had wholly misinterpreted and misunderstood the arguments I was putting forward. I do understand the difference between right and wrong. I do understand the limit which allows Litigants who are at the mercy of the Crown to institute their proceedings, because it is necessary they should have a fiat. I do understand the necessity to recognise their efforts as equivalent to having instituted proceedings. I protest, on behalf of persons who are absolutely apart from politics, and who endeavoured to get recognition of their rights long before the date mentioned in the Resolution. It is most unjust at this moment that the undertaking in regard to
costs should be cut down to a comparatively few persons, and that those persons who, but for the indemnity, would have a perfectly just case for recovering their claims, should now be deprived even of their costs because of the technical meaning which attaches to the word "instituted." I am not going to move the Amendment, but I have felt it my duty to make this protest. I have been in this House 18 years and I have never known it do an act of injustice such as it is about to perpetrate now.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Clearly, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ealing (Sir H. Nield), if he will excuse my saying so, is under a particular misapprehension. I certainly did not intend to be facetious at his expense, and, certainly, I did not endeavour to make any suggestion that he was not quite aware of what he was doing. I ventured to point out that he was really making an attack, not upon me, but upon my predecessor, the late Attorney-General. He suggested quite plainly that the late Attorney-General, having been asked on the 6th October, 1922, to grant a fiat, delayed doing it until the 17th January, 1924. What I ventured to point out is that the facts about that, as far as I know them, are that on the 6th October, 1922, my predecessor was asked about a fiat, and his answer was that, inasmuch as there were proceedings then pending before the War Compensation Court, he could not see his way to grant the fiat until either those proceedings were dealt with, or were abandoned and new proceedings instituted. In spite of that advice from my predecessor, he heard no word of any sort or kind from the persons who wanted the fiat till January, 1924. So far from delaying matters, all he did was to give a perfectly right and proper opinion, which was not acted upon, and, consequently, it was entirely the fault of the clients in question that the fiat was not granted till January, 1924.

Sir H. NIELD: Will the learned Attorney-General admit that in April, 1923, Lord Justice Scrutton, in delivering judgment in this very case, used severe words of the right to demand that the proceedings in the War Compensation Court should be made a petition for granting that fiat.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: It is not fair to suggest to me that I should ad-
mit that a learned Judge used certain words, for I cannot recall what particular words were used by learned Judges on different occasions; but if the right hon. Gentleman says the Judge said it, I would certainly accept that from him. I am quite satisfied that if the learned Judge had been told what I have just told my right hon. Friend, he would have said it was entirely the fault of the person who was complaining that he did not make some communication to the Attorney-General between the 14th July, 1922, and January, 1924. If any person has been deprived of his right to get these costs by reason of some default of any Attorney-General in granting a fiat, that is to say, if the application for a fiat was made prior to 31st August, 1922, and the only reason why the proceedings were not started was the unwarranted delay of any Attorney-General, I shall certainly advise my right hon. Friend that that person should have the benefit of this Bill. I know of no such case, but if anyone will tell me of one, with the necessary evidence, I shall certainly take that course.

Sir P. LLOYD-GREAME: The only point before the Committee is that we all want to be sure that the words which are inserted in the Bill completely implement the undertaking. I am not lawyer enough to know whether the words, even as they stand, are sufficient to cause what the House wants. I am clear as to what I meant when I made my proposal. It was this: that whenever anyone had incurred legal expense of any sort in connection with his claim, he should have complete indemnification in respect of all his legal expenses, whatever they might be. It is a plain and simple procedure which the House wishes to adopt. It is for the lawyers in the House to satisfy us that we have the right words to make that certain.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: What these words are intended to mean, and do mean, is that the highest scale of costs will be paid to every person who did start proceedings against the Crown prior to 1st September, 1922. Under the Indemnity Act they would be entitled to nothing after that date.

Mr. JOWITT: I am sure that it was the intention of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, and the the intention of the
President of the Board of Trade to see that people who brought their actions before this date should have a complete indemnity against costs. I suggest to the Attorney-General that he might, on the Report Stage, introduce some such words as
shall be completely indemnified against all costs properly and reasonably incurred.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: We will consider it. May I say to the lawyers in the House that we all know the problem which always arises about indemnities for costs. An offer of solicitor and own client costs is one which I have never yet known to fail to be entirely satisfactory to the solicitor on the other side, who is always the most difficult person to satisfy. The difficulty about solicitor and own client costs is that there is taxation on the highest scale known to the law and if you have an indemnity then you have all sorts of unexpected agreements made between clients and solicitors under which exceptionally high costs have been agreed to in exceptional cases. I really think, however, solicitor and own client costs should be satisfactory.

Mr. LEIF JONES: I do not want to enter into a lawyer's quarrels about costs but I do not yet understand the point about the date. The right hon. Gentleman put his question explicitly to the President of the Board of Trade. In the Amendment the date 1st September, 1922, is inserted which bars certain claims. The Attorney-General says they are all barred by the Act of Indemnity, but on the last Amendment we were told the Act of Indemnity did not bar these claims.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: What I told the Committee on the last Amendment was this: I warned them they must not take it as established beyond question that the claims were barred. At the moment, the law is that they are barred but it is impossible to say definitely whether they are or not. There is a risk either way. As the law at present stands they are barred.

Mr. JONES: Then there is a doubt whether the claims are barred or not. How, then, can the Attorney-General fail to commiserate the fate of these people who put in claims too late—claims on which he himself admits there is reason-
able doubt. It seems rather hard on these people if there is some doubt as to whether the claims are valid or not, that they should be barred out when we are passing legislation of this kind.

Sir P. LLOYD-GREAME: I am bound to say I think my hon. Friend who spoke last is right. It is a little difficult to follow this argument. What I understood I was proposing last time was that everybody who had brought any sort of action should have a complete indemnity against any costs. I understood the Attorney-General to say: "You need not indemnify people who brought actions after a certain date; they could not conceivably have won and had no claim." In the same breath the hon. and learned Gentleman warns the Committee that this is not finally settled and that had these claims been pursued to judgment from court to court, it is as like as not they would have succeeded. I do not think he should stand on both grounds. The fair thing to do is to accept his advice that it is by no means settled what is the final law on this matter and treat the action which has been begun as an action which might have been carried to final judgment in the highest court and every single person who brought an action ought to receive a complete indemnity. We ought to make a clean sweep, once and for all, of all this in the fairest possible way. The only fair thing to do is to take the whole of the claims, wherever they were lodged, at whatever time they were begun, and give a complete indemnity.

Mr. WEBB: I am not inclined at this moment to take the responsibility of making such a universal affirmative as has been suggested. The proposal to indemnify people for costs can only have reference to suits which are in some way connected with subjects in this Bill. Then we must consider the date, because there may be some people beginning to put in claims now. Since this Bill has been in the House is surely notice enough. Quite frequently the operative Clauses of a Bill are dated back to the date of the introduction of the Bill. I am not prepared to say that any man who commenced an action yesterday should be entitled to be indemnified As far as I understand it, the terms of the proposed Clause as to costs are sweeping enough except on this one point of date, and the Attorney-
General has already promised to consider, if they are not sweeping enough, what words can be put in. Now there is the question of date. I do not think we ought at this moment to consent to leave out the date altogether. I do not think it is reasonable. I think there must be a date, and I will undertake to have it considered between now and the Report Stage, with the intention of really compensating anyone who has taken proceedings which, so to speak, he had any moral right or justification to take, but I do not feel inclined at this moment to agree to pay law costs to anyone who has entered a suit against the Crown at any date whatsoever. I want to assure the Committee that I am prepared to agree to put in the necessary words to make the fullest possible indemnity to anyone whose right we are taking away by this Bill, and I am not quibbling about it. I will ask the House to leave it there, on the understanding that it will be reviewed before the Report stage.

Mr. HARNEY: I think we are getting into some confusion. I cannot see what the date has to do with it, or the various scales of costs. The position is surely this: Some years ago persons who admittedly then had legal, good claims against the Crown were entitled to assert these claims, and their assertions cost money. They had to go to a solicitor, the solicitor had to employ counsel, and so on, and while all this expense was being incurred, rightly, that stage had not been reached when the proceedings were instituted, because proceedings are instituted only after the Attorney-General has given his fiat, but long before he gives his fiat costs are incurred, and rightly incurred, in this case. I want to know what justification there can be for saying to A: "Mr. A, you have properly gone to a solicitor and incurred costs, but you have been fortunate enough to get the fiat of the Attorney-General before August, 1922. Therefore, you will be refunded all the expense that you have incurred in rightly asserting your claim; but, Mr. B, you had also a claim. You also went to your solicitor at the same time, and incurred the same kind of expense, but you have not been fortunate enough to get the fiat of the Attorney-General before August, 1922. Therefore, you will get none of these expenses." What has the question of whether the Attorney-General has or has
not given his fiat to do with the rightfulness of A and B taking these proceedings?

Mr. WEBB: I would like to appeal to the hon. Member. The point he is making has already been covered, and an undertaking has been given to include any person who failed to get the fiat of the Attorney-General in circumstances when he ought to have had it. If there has been any lapse at any time, that is made good.

Mr. HARNEY: That is no answer to me whatsoever. I am not concerned with a fiat or any excuse. What I am concerned with is this simple fact. Two persons, A and B, admittedly and rightly, run up a Bill with their solicitor. A happens to have got a fiat; B happens not to have got a fiat. That has nothing whatever to do with the original expenses they incurred. Then why fix this date of August, 1922? It is bad enough to say that claims that were legal rights convertible into money are wiped away retrospectively, but what you are doing now is to say, "We do not merely retrospectively wipe away property, but we retrospectively make wrong that which at the time it was done was quite right." Can any Member of this Committee deny that a person was justified in going to his solicitor and incurring costs when the law says that at that time he had a valid claim? Of course, no hon. Member can deny that. Why, then, are these people to be deprived of their expenses which they rightly incurred because the claim is wiped out? The answer given to the late President of the Board of Trade by the present President of the Board of Trade was quite right. The question put to him, as I understand the English language, was simply this: Will there be any difficulty in all those who have put forward claims against the Government being paid their costs? The answer was, "There will be no difficulty." We were told, indeed, that there was to be the greatest difficulty for those who came after a certain date and instituted proceedings: that those who were lucky enough to get the fiat of the Attorney-General before the date would be all right, and that those who were unlucky enough not to get the fiat would be deprived of their costs. The President of the Board of Trade makes this distinc-
tion. He says: "Oh, well, there may be persons putting in claims now: are they to get their costs?" I say "Yes." I do not think the Committee ought to recognise these declarations. It is not the items that may be exposed here, but the Act that is the test. If claims made now are justified under the law persons ought not, in pursuing those claims, to be deprived of the expenses they are put to in pursuing what the law says they are entitled to pursue.

Sir COURTENAY MANSEL: The only complaint that I have to make against the promises made at the present time by the President of the Board of Trade to deal with this matter on the Report Stage is that he has not, in my judgment, carried out the very clear and explicit promise that he made on the Second Reading. This is of some importance, because I do not doubt that that very clear and explicit promise that he made must here influence votes on the Second Reading. I do not see with what consistency he can ask us to rely upon further promises on Report where he has not carried out his previous promises. I placed an Amendment on the Paper, to the best of my ability, in accordance with the terms of the promise of the President, and in order to carry out the intention of many now here. In a matter like this loss and even ruin may be inflicted upon persons who, however unworthy in the eyes of some hon. Members and supposed to be profiteers, and votes were given on the strength of the promise of the President. That promise decided the judgment of the House. Many hon. Members voted for what they considered an unconstitutional measure because it deprived persons who were supposed to have profited. That makes it all the more important that in a measure of this kind the point should be considered. I think the Bill is a thoroughly dangerous Bill and subversive of the ancient order of things; and it is important that at the opening of the new era and in relation to so important a measure, that a Minister of the Crown should observe his promise with scrupulousness. I earnestly appeal to the President of the Board of Trade in this matter. [An HON. MEMBER: "What was the promise?"] I am asked what the promise was. It is very clear here.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hendon (Sir P. Lloyd-Greame) said:
I would make this plain here and now—and it would be satisfactory if we could have a firm assurance on it from the right hon. Gentleman—that in all cases where litigation has been begun and carried to any stage, whether it is before a single Judge in a Court, or whatever may be the expense, the Government should give a complete indemnity against all costs. I do not mean taxed costs, but that they will repay to every single claimant who has taken action the full costs incurred. If the right hon. Gentleman will give an undertaking of that kind, it will be easier to come to a decision when the Bill gets into Committee.
And the President of the Board of Trade replied:
I can give, on behalf of the Government, the fullest possible undertaking on the lines he has indicated with regard to costs.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th May, 1924; col. 170, Vol. 173.]
The President of the Board of Trade also suggested that some of the claims put forward at a later date might be of a trivial or fictitious nature. I am only asking for information, and I take it that the Attorney-General would not give his fiat to claims of such a nature as that. I take it that by giving his fiat he is satisfied that the case has some merit and is of a substantial character. I hope the President of the Board of Trade will adhere to the assurance which he has given to the House. There have been cases before where promises have been made, but not in such clear terms or so explicit, but they were assurances that these matters would be considered, and in deference to those promises actions have been dropped. In many cases no satisfaction has been given, but there has been no single case of so definite a character as this. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will stand by the promise which he has made to the House.

Mr. WEBB: I will certainly stand by the promises I have given, but the hon. Member has misunderstood me. My promise is that
I can give, on behalf of the Government, the fullest possible undertaking on the lines he has indicated with regard to the costs.
If the hon. Member will read the actual words used by the right hon. Gentleman (Sir P. Lloyd-Greame) he will find that those lines related to two things in particular, that is to say—
that in all cases where litigation has been begun and carried to any stage, whether it is before a single Judge in a Court, or what-
ever may be the expense, the Government should give a complete indemnity against all costs. I do not mean taxed costs, but that they will repay to every single claimant who has taken action the full costs incurred."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th May, 1924; col. 170, Vol. 173.]
Those are the lines indicated, and it was on those lines that I gave my assurance, and I will certainly carry that out. The further point which has been raised is the date up to which these actions should be indemnified. The Attorney-General has said, and I have also said the same thing, that between now and the Report stage we will consider whether that can be safely altered. We will consider that point in order that no injustice shall be done. I cannot, however, take the responsibility of saying that the Government will repay any costs without very careful consideration, and we must be careful to see that we are not letting in matters which the Committee would not wish us to let in.

Mr. NESBITT: I hope the Committee will agree to accept the statement made by the President of the Board of Trade. There is really no substantial difference between the views which have been put; it is merely a difference in language as between, what I may call, the common view of the Committee and the understanding of those who heard, as I did, the observations of the right hon. Gentleman the former President of the Board of Trade and of the present President. There are two points, and there is really no difficulty about them, after what has been said. The first is the question of the date. It would be quite wrong that any person at any time should be able to receive the indemnity to which the President of the Board of Trade has referred. He might have started his suit yesterday, when he knew perfectly well what was the undertaking and what was in the mind of the House on the occasion of the Second Reading. It seems to me quite plain that some date must be fixed, and I do not think it would be convenient—indeed, it would be dangerous—to fix a date to-night, without consultation with those in the Department of the Board of Trade and others who may have the facts relating to the particular cases which have to be considered. It is perfectly obvious that, as the Attorney-General has said, the intentions both of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hendon (Sir P. Lloyd-Greame) and of the
President of the Board of Trade are identical in that respect.
The second question is in regard to costs. I notice that there is no means whatever of fixing the amount which is to be paid. It is defined in the Amendment as being solicitor-and-client costs, and that is to be altered to "solicitor and own client" costs; but even with this alteration there is great room for dispute, and I should like to call in the aid of those officials to whom I made reference last night in another connection, namely, the taxing masters. I should like to see-inserted, after "payment of costs," the technical words which are well known to those who have experience of these matters:—
including payment of costs, charges and expenses as between solicitor and own client, to be taxed in case the parties differ.
By "parties" I mean the Crown and the subject. If you have these words in, you will get a complete indemnity, but you will not be making the Government liable for any expenses which, perhaps, may be described as luxury expenses, such as might, for instance, be incurred by a client who wishes to obtain the services of the most expensive lawyers he can obtain, and has to pay the fees which those lawyers think they ought to be paid. Let the taxing master be the tribunal to decide what amount should be paid; let it be such an amount as the taxing master allows as being the costs, charges and expenses as between solicitor and own client in respect of claims for the making of which there was proper justification. I submit that suggestion for the consideration of the Attorney-General and of the President of the Board of Trade between now and the Report stage, when they are considering what precise words can be put in.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: I shall be prepared to accept those words.

Sir C. MANSEL: I wish to insist on the modification I have proposed, on the ground that the words of the promise formerly given by the President of the Board of Trade are perfectly clear. He accepts the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hendon (Sir P. Lloyd-Greame) that in any case where litigation has been begun and carried to any stage—

The CHAIRMAN: Is the hon Member speaking to his Amendment?

Sir C. MANSEL: Yes, Sir.

The CHAIRMAN: That will come later.

Sir H. NIELD: I desire to make a suggestion. I think there is an infirmity in the Amendment as drawn, because it may be, and probably is, the fact that many cases are in the list for trial now. The Amendment reads:
any order made therein for the payment of costs to the person by whom the proceedings were instituted.
That, I think, would be interpreted as meaning an order made before the passing of this Act, but in many of these cases which are in the ordinary list waiting to come on there may be a subsequent application for costs. I think we ought to consider, between now and Report, some words which would enable a subsequent application for costs to be made in the middle of the proceedings in order to meet this point. I do think that the words should read "Where any proceedings were commenced before the — day of —". I think that would make the matter perfectly clear.

Question, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause," put, and negatived.

Question proposed, "That the proposed words be there inserted."

Sir C. MANSEL: I beg to move, as an Amendment to the proposed Amendment, to leave out the words
unless the Court or a Judge of the Court or the tribunal dealing with the case, thinks just to order otherwise.
I have put down this Amendment because it seems to me that the Government are taking advantage of every legal point that is in favour of the Crown, and taking away from the subject all rights that the law gives. If they come to this House and wish to judge this question on grounds which do not depend upon law, it does not seem to me to be equitable that they should take advantage of every legal point. Let them leave the law on one side, and appeal to the mature judgment of this House. I hope the Government will see their way to say that petitioners who have been put to expense should be repaid their expenses. If the President of the Board of Trade, as I understand his remark, assents to
my proposition, that all expenses should be repaid, I cannot see the necessity of introducing into this Clause the words "unless the Court or a Judge of the Court or the tribunal dealing with the case thinks just to order otherwise." The fact of these persons having taken proceedings, and being unable to test their rights, seems to me to entitle them to get their rights. We are asking for a bare measure of justice, and I hope the Government will not deal ungenerously with these people who almost for the first time in English history are deprived of their rights.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: I really think the President of the Board of Trade has met this matter by saying that this Clause is going to be re-drafted. But I do ask hon. Members to consider the effect of the words which the Amendment proposes to leave out. They are only put in in order to deal with a purely fraudulent or dishonest case which somebody may have started without any justification. There must be some protection in such cases, and those words do no harm to honest men.

Mr. NESBITT: I entirely agree with what the Attorney-General has said. I think we should be letting in claims started in the hope of getting something for which there was no justification. I hope when the President of the Board of Trade is considering the question of date he will not consider the omission of these words. No honest claim will be barred The Court will have to be thoroughly satisfied before it says a claimant will not be entitled to costs.

Amendment, to proposed Amendment negatived.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 (Short Title) ordered to stand part of the Bill.

SCHEDULE—(Particulars of Charges).

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Schedule stand part of the Bill."

Mr. L. JONES: I have put down an Amendment to leave out the Schedule in order to have a statement as to the reason for putting it in in this particular form.
In the original Bill introduced by the late Government there was no Schedule, and I understand it has been put in in order that people may know what are the claims that are barred. But if you read the words of the Preamble it is clear that the Schedule is not inclusive, and we are in the position of having a Schedule which names some of the claims which are barred, but not all. Either the Schedule should be inclusive of all possible claims or there should be no Schedule at all.

Mr. WEBB: I daresay the right hon Gentleman is right from the point of view of elegance, but the Bill of the late Government was entirely unintelligible. The right hon. Gentleman suggests that because there are general words in the Bill, as there were originally, that renders the Schedule somewhat inconclusive. As a matter of fact, it serves the useful purpose of making the Bill more intelligible to the ordinary lay reader. The right hon. Gentleman himself agrees that it is necessary to have general words, but the Schedule is not in derogation of those words, and it has the merit of making the Bill intelligible. These charges and licences were made or issued by any number of separate Departments which have since been abolished, and the records have been very largely destroyed and the officers dispersed. It does not seem possible to make a list which could be said to be absolutely complete of all the fees paid and charged. For that reason we want the general words, and, in order to make the Bill as intelligible as possible, a list is given of as many kinds of charges as can now be traced.

Sir T. INSKIP: I am not quite clear that the right hon. Gentleman has given a satisfactory answer on the point. I have handed in an Amendment to leave out, in line 16 of the Preamble, the words "certain charges including," so that the Bill will be limited to the Schedule. The right hon. Gentleman said something about elegance. The right hon Gentleman said the Bill introduced by the late Government was not elegant.

Mr. WEBB: No. I said the Schedule was not very elegant.

12.0 M.

Sir T. INSKIP: I leave the question of elegance to the right hon. Gentleman. As this method has been adopted of having a Schedule, I think the Schedule should be respectively the Schedule.
Those who practice in the Courts often hear criticism of the Legislature; I had that privilege this morning. When the opportunity arises, we ought to see to it that a Bill is put in the proper form. The right hon. Gentleman says that a number of charges may arise as to which nobody knows the facts at the moment, or the merits or the legal position. We ought not to legislate in the dark. When this point has been dealt with I intend to move to leave out from the Preamble the words "certain charges, including."

Mr. JONES: I have an Amendment dealing with that.

PREAMBLE.

Mr. JONES: I beg to move, in page 1, line 8, after the word "indirectly" to insert the word "charges."
I propose to move a further Amendment, leaving out the words "certain charges, including the several charges specified in the Schedule to this Act."
The amended Preamble would then read:
Imposed, or purported to impose, directly or indirectly, charges by way of payments," etc.
I think that will meet the purpose of the hon. and learned Member for Central Bristol.

Sir T. INSKIP: I do not think it will, because the Bill is framed with a Schedule. If the right hon. Gentleman will accept my suggestion he will achieve his purpose and it will be done in proper form.

Mr. JONES: If the hon. and learned Member will move his Amendment, I will withdraw mine.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Sir T. INSKIP: I beg to move, in page 1, line 16, to leave out the words "certain charges, including." The Preamble would then read:
Whereas during the late war certain Government Departments … imposed,

or purported to impose, directly or indirectly, by way of payments … the several charges specified in the Schedule to this Act,"

Then the subject will know that the only charges legalised by this Act are specified in the Schedule. The defence for this Bill is that the charges which are legalised are charges which ought to have been made, and the resistance to them has no merit in it. We know what are the merits or demerits of the charges that are actually mentioned, but we do not know what the merits or demerits are when we do not know what the charges are.

Mr. WEBB: I am sorry, but I cannot take the responsibility of accepting this Amendment. The Bill was framed in general terms to cover all the charges of this nature. The charges were invalidated by the judgment in tie milk case. The Bill has been drafted to meet a definite thing—namely, the invalidation of certain charges of this nature. The late Government, and the Government before the late Government, thought it necessary to bring in a Bill in general words validating these charges. We have done the same, and now that we have got to the last stage I am asked to agree to cut down the Bill so that it shall not apply generally to all these cases, but shall apply only to those specified in the Schedule. I would ask the Committee to leave the Bill in the form in which it has been brought in by three successive Governments. Simply because we have put in a Schedule to make the Bill more intelligible to people, that is no reason for limiting the Bill in the way now suggested. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to withdraw his Amendment, but if he will not do so I must ask the Committee to reject it.

Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Preamble."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 93; Noes, 54.

Division No. 77.]
AYES.
[12.7 a.m.


Adamson, Rt. Hon. William
Benn, Captain Wedgwood (Leith)
Climie, R.


Adamson, W. M. (Staff., Cannock)
Black, J. W.
Cluse, W. S.


Alexander, A. V. (Sheffield, Hillsbro')
Broad, F. A.
Compton, Joseph


Alstead, R.
Bromfield, William
Costello, L. W. J.


Ayles, W. H.
Buckle, J.
Crittall, V. G.


Baker, Walter
Charleton, H. C.
Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton)


Barnes, A.
Clarke, A.
Dickie, Captain J. P.


Dickson, T.
Kennedy, T.
Sherwood, George Henry


Dunnico, H.
Law, A.
Smith, Ben (Bermondsey, Rotherhithe)


Edwards, C. (Monmouth, Bedwellty)
Lawson, John James
Smith, W. R. (Norwich)


Edwards, G. (Norfolk, Southern)
Leach, W.
Stephen, Campbell


Egan, W. H.
Livingstone, A. M.
Sutherland, Rt. Hon. Sir William


Emlyn-Jones, J. E. (Dorset, N.)
Loverseed, J. F.
Thompson, Piers G. (Torquay)


Finney, V. H.
Lunn, William
Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton, E.)


Gardner, B. W. (West Ham, Upton)
Macfadyen, E.
Tinker, John Joseph


George, Major G. L. (Pembroke)
Maclean, Neil (Glasgow, Govan)
Toole, J.


Gillett, George M.
Marley, James
Tout, W. J.


Gosling, Harry
Martin, F. (Aberd'n & Kinc'dine, E.)
Varley, Frank B.


Gould, Frederick (Somerset, Frome)
Martin, W. H. (Dumbarton)
Warne, G. H.


Graham, D. M. (Lanark, Hamilton)
Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. L. (Exeter)
Watson, W. M. (Dunfermline)


Grenfell, D. R. (Glamorgan)
O'Grady, Captain James
Watts-Morgan, Lt.-Col. D. (Rhondda)


Hall, G. H. (Merthyr Tydvil)
Parkinson, John Allen (Wigan)
Webb, Lieut.-Col. Sir H. (Cardiff, E.)


Hamilton, Sir R. (Orkney & Shetland)
Perry, S. F.
Webb, Rt. Hon. Sidney


Hardie, George D.
Phillipps, Vivian
Welsh, J. C.


Hartshorn, Rt. Hon. Vernon
Purcell, A. A.
White, H. G. (Birkenhead, E.)


Hastings, Sir Patrick
Richardson, R. (Houghton-le-Spring)
Williams, Col. P. (Middlesbrough, E.)


Haycock, A. W.
Ritson, J.
Williams, Lt.-Col. T. S. B. (Kenningtn.)


Henderson, T. (Glasgow)
Roberts, Rt. Hon. F. O. (W. Bromwich)
Wilson, C. H. (Sheffield, Attercliffe)


Hudson, J. H.
Robertson, J. (Lanark, Bothwell)
Wright, W.


Jenkins, W. (Glamorgan, Neath)
Samuel, H. Walter (Swansea, West)



John, William (Rhondda, West)
Seely, Rt. Hon. Maj.-Gen. J. E. B. (I. of W.)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—


Jones, T. I. Mardy (Pontypridd)
Sexton, James
Mr. Spoor and Mr. Frederick Hall.


NOES.


Aske, Sir Robert William
Hannon, Patrick Joseph Henry
Nicholson, O. (Westminster)


Balfour, George (Hampstead)
Harney, E. A.
Nield, Rt. Hon. Sir Herbert


Barclay, R. Noton
Hartington, Marquess of
Oliver, P. M. (Manchester, Blackley)


Barnett, Major Richard W.
Harvey, T. E. (Dewsbury)
Pattinson, S. (Horncastle)


Bonwick, A.
Inskip, Sir Thomas Walker H.
Ramage, Captain Cecil Beresford


Bowyer, Capt. G. E. W.
Jones, Rt. Hon. Leif (Camborne)
Royle, C.


Courthope, Lieut.-Col. George L.
Jowitt, W. A. (The Hartlepools)
Simpson, J. Hope


Crooke, J. Smedley (Deritend)
Keens, T.
Spencer, H. H. (Bradford, S.)


Darbishire, C. W.
King, Captain Henry Douglas
Spero, Dr. G. E.


Dawson, Sir Philip
Lamb, J. Q.
Starmer, Sir Charles


Dixey, A. C.
Lessing, E.
Stranger, Innes Harold


Dodds, S. R.
Lloyd, Cyril E. (Dudley)
Thornton, Maxwell R.


England, Colonel A.
McLean, Major A.
Wise, Sir Frederic


Eyres-Monsell, Com. Rt. Hon. B. M.
Maden, H.
Wood, Major M. M. (Aberdeen, C.)


Falconer, J.
Meyler, Lieut.-Colonel H. M.
Yerburgh, Major Robert D. T.


Fletcher, Lieut.-Com. R. T. H.
Millar, J. D.



Foot, Isaac
Mond, H.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—


Greene, W. P. Crawford
Nall, Lieut.-Colonel Sir Joseph
Sir Courtenay Mansel and Sir Robert Kay.


Greenwood, William (Stockport)
Nesbitt, Robert C.



Hacking, Captain Douglas H.

Preamble agreed to.

Bill reported; as amended, to be considered upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 138.]

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

It being after half-past Eleven of the clock upon Wednesday evening, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at sixteen minutes after Twelve o'clock.